Bill Foster promises pork
June 22nd, 2008I was amused by a Courier story that came out last week detailing Congressman Bill Foster’s federal funding requests amounting to a whopping $55,800,000. Since this is a campaign year, nobody has been left behind. Among the requests for Aurora ($13.6M total requests), for example, he’s requesting $1.4 million for the an entrance road to the Auroral Municipal Airport (huh?), $250K for equipment for the Aurora police and $1.9 million for a trolley. Okay…
For Elgin, there’s $8 million money for ECC, the Boys and Girls Club, and a variety of other stuff. St. Charles will get a million dollars for their downtown parking deck.
Of course these are just requests, and as a freshman it will be interesting to see whether the appropriations cardinals will give him anything. They might because the 14th could still theoretically go back to Republican control in the fall. And being able to deliver for the district could help his prospects for reelection. But it’s unlikely.
It’s just that I can’t help remembering when he criticized Dennis Hastert for spending too much money. In fact, his own campaign website still says:
If elected, Foster promised to help end America’s dependence on foreign oil and put a stop to the out of control spending that has plagued Washington.
“We’re bankrupting our country. Every man, woman, and child in the 14th district right now has $29,500 in debt because of the out of control spending that has gone on in Washington,” said Foster.
Isn’t it ironic?
Denny Hastert never publicized such requests, not even in an election year:
Foster’s predecessor, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, never released his full list of appropriations requests, according to his former spokesman Brad Hahn. Hastert, Hahn said, preferred to work behind the scenes until the job was finished before calling attention to it.
“He believed there was plenty of time to celebrate accomplishments after the fact but saw little use in notifying the media until the job was done,” Hahn said. (Courier News 6/19/08)
Another sign of the “real changes” that Mr. Foster is promising the 14th district.
So according to you he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, eh?
He can make his requests public and open himself up to your spin and complaints or he can keep things secret and hidden, which you would likely complain about as well.
To the point, however, these are Rep. Foster’s requests for your district. Not all the requests are going to make it through despite your apparent lack of comprehension.
At least he’s being open and honest about his requests and won’t profit from a Boy & Girls Club grant or a parking garage… unlike a certain former Congressman who benefited quite handsomely from the secretive Prairie Parkway deal. No wonder Rep. Hastert “believed there was plenty of time to celebrate accomplishments after the fact but saw little use in notifying the media until the job was done.”
Posted June 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 pmMaybe if Foster had the guts to have voted against George Bush’s war last week, there would be funds for helping people in his district.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
And nobody excels at deficit spending like the modern Repub party and their 100 yrs of war.
Shame Foster doesn’t have the guts to fight it.
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 1:33 amThank you both for your comments.
I don’t mind that Mr. Foster is making federal funding requests. I just think it’s ironic that he was criticizing other people for out of control spending and then turns around and requests $55.8M in pork, and doing it very publicly in an election year.
It doesn’t have anything to do with being a Democrat or a Republican. Tim Schmitz, a Republican is another person who did something similar. Just a week before an election, he said he was introducing some tax-cutting legislation, which he conceded would never get passed.
Whichever party is concerned, it’s the same political garbage.
Anybody who thought that the real changes that Bill Foster was talking about were positive changes, well perhaps it’s time to evaluate his record. From what I’ve seen recently it’s not impressive, and that’s from a conservative standpoint. From the left, R. Swan’s comment seems to suggest that Mr. Foster has betrayed his base, and has already changed positions to fit whatever he thinks will get him re-elected.
Mr. Foster in his short time in his office has already shown himself to be a politician of convenience, not one of conviction or principal.
Jim Oberweis has often been criticized as not being likable enough. And sure that matters to some extent, but where it really matters, on character, convictions and principles, you can’t help but admire his willingness to take stands that are not popular but correct–or which at least he believes to be correct.
I don’t agree with Mr. Oberweis on all issues, but I respect his ability to stick by his beliefs whether they will get him elected or not.
Posted June 25th, 2008 at 12:12 amFrom R. Swan’s comments, apparently Foster has already disappointed the flagburner constituency which is such a vibrant part of the modern Democratic party. Nevertheless, how could any responsible American politician do otherwise? Note R. Swan’s reference to “the modern Repub party and their 100 yrs of war.” Gee, are we now to understand that, to use R. Swan’s idiom, Woodrow Wilson’s war, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war, Harry Truman’s war, and Jack Kennedy’s and Lyndon Johnson’s war were “Repub” wars? One does read a lot about the historical imbecility of Americans, but with the perverted perpective that R. Swan exhibits it’s no wonder he represents a constituency just this side of the Klan in terms of respectabilty. The only “Repub war” the Democrats truly opposed was Abraham Lincoln’s war and that was because Abe was threatening the plantation system that has always been at the heart of the Democratic party’s existence. Go down to the Lincoln museum in Springfield and you’ll see examples of the Democrats’ hatred of Lincoln that make the flagburners’ hatred of Bush look absolutely charitable. Of course, the party recovered quite nicely from those Copperhead days and has just embarked on their third century of finding new ways to sustain itself by isolating and exploiting black Americans. “Meet the new boss,” indeed.
Posted June 25th, 2008 at 9:56 pmBill Foster secured federal money for our district that otherwise would have gone somewhere else.
Wow, the nerve.
Posted June 27th, 2008 at 8:12 pmIt’s important to keep in mind that these are just requests made in an election year. Nothing has been secured.
But the issue isn’t about federal funding here.
It’s about promising one thing and doing another. When you’re campaigning on the promise of fighting out of control spending and then turn around and request more than $55M in pork for your district, it just shows poor leadership and character.
Posted June 27th, 2008 at 9:38 pmWell, the news this week has Foster spending the public money on a “fact-finding” mission down to the Mexican border where his “scientific” mind no doubt will discover that Mexicans are illegally entering the United States. I hope he can survive the shock.
He could have saved himself the hassle, saved us the money, and gotten a much fuller picture of the problem by dropping by a few places in Elgin. For starters he might want to place a call over to Leo Nelson at the Chamber of Commerce. It would be a good chance to ask Leo why the US Chamber continues to lobby, despite increasing American unemployment, for “immigration reform” bringing into the country more millions of peon laborers for the jobs they can’t send to Mexico, India or China. And then Dr. Science could stop off at the Police Station to ask Chief Womack about the illegal alien gang members arrested this week in Elgin and whether this development has changed the Chief’s opinion that “immigration” has had no connection to organized crime in Elgin. Foster also truly could do us all a service by finding out who employs the Mexican gangsters when they’re not out hustling drugs, shooting people or engaged in their other recreations. According to today’s Herald 48 “undocumented immigrants” (love those euphemisms) were arrested in the area this week for gang activity. Who employees them? I suspect there are powerful business and political forces that don’t want that information released, but as a Congressman Foster could do us all a genuine favor by finding those facts. That is, if he really wants to find facts.
Posted July 19th, 2008 at 11:06 pm