Thomas MacMillan Photo
When Rosa DeLauro voted against raising the federal debt ceiling, she meant it — but she also would have voted “yes” if the measure were in danger of failing.
So DeLauro explained her controversial vote to a group of longtime supporters.
DeLauro, the Democrat who represents Greater New Haven in the U.S. House of Representatives, has come under fire for her vote last week. Example: This editorial in the New Haven Register, which argued that DeLauro refused to “compromise [her] principles” even if that meant plunging the federal government into default.
In response, DeLauro has made an extra effort this past week to explain her vote to constituents. She described a nuanced process that occurs in D.C. when representatives want to make an important point of conscience on a pressing national matter but also want to make sure they don’t upend carefully crafted compromises that keep the country running. In this case, she felt she needed to demonstrate the need to move the nation’s conversation away from single-minded cutting and deficit reduction that will eventually harm the middle class, but also needed to help avoid having the federal government go into default, she said.
DeLauro talked about that vote this week at a church event (pictured at the top of the story) in New Haven’s Fair Haven community (read about that here) as well as at a gathering of Branford Democrats a day earlier. She also wrote an opinion piece on the issue, which was published Tuesday by the influential news site Politico.
Fellow Connecticut Democratic U.S. Reps. John Larson and Chris Murphy voted the same way as DeLauro. Had the vote on default been close, the three would have voted yes. They voted late, waiting to see how the vote went. (Reps. Joe Courtney and Jim Himes voted yes.)
“We voted no because it is a terrible piece of legislation, an outrageous piece of legislation which will cause enormous harm,” DeLauro told the 80 Branford Democrats at a weekend kick-off of town First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos’s campaign for a sixth term.
DeLauro explained to the Branford audience why theirs was a nuanced vote. “The soul of the nation” was at stake, she said. Their vote, she said, took into account the immediate future. It would help influence what is expected to be a fierce debate over where cuts will be made when there is no new revenue on the table. That fight begins in Congress next month.
She thanked her supporters for giving her the right to vote her conscience although she knew she ran the risk that her vote would be misinterpreted, she said. In the end, the vote was 269 to 161 in support of the plan, with 174 Republicans in support and Democrats evenly dividend in support of and against the plan.
DeLauro minced no words in describing a conservative Republican political force that she argued is moving toward destroying the middle class in this nation.
“Keep in mind that the debt ceiling was lifted since 1961, 74 times — and 18 times under Ronald Reagan and seven times under George Bush. So this is not the agenda. It was a different agenda. And they won,” she said. Then she said it again, slowly. “And they won.”
“There is not a shred of revenue on the table. So when the go to move from this first $1.2 trillion to the second $1.5 they will have to go to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to try to get that money. You break faith on those three programs and you destroy the middle class in this country. Make no mistake about any of that. That is what is at stake. And I will tell you this and I have said this to you before, they will do nothing about any of the special interest tax cuts, the oil companies, the big agricultural jobs overseas, they will have none of that on the table.
“The fight in the super committee [a bipartisan panel that will recommend cuts] will be over priorities with the Republicans finding money for defense but finding none for education, health care, social security, discretionary funds — all of the things we hold dear. That is nature of the debate.” She predicted gridlock.
“This will be a very different country if we allow these people to continue. I believe we can take back the House of Representatives next time. We have 25 seats to get back. I think the country is beginning to see who these Tea Party folks are and what they are about.”
DeLauro said “people didn’t bargain for this. They wanted jobs; they wanted to see the economy turn around and yes, they do want to see the deficit reduced. But they don’t want to see that deficit reduced on the backs of seniors, youngsters needing an education, health care for the people of this country,” and other issues.
“That is not what they bargained for. Our job is to let them know what is going on. And we haven’t always been good at that. We haven’t,” she said forcefully. “We haven’t. And we have to take that rap and we’ve got to turn it around.
“The debt ceiling is not a program by program issue. It is about what [conservative strategist] Grover Norquist has said — starve the federal government until it is small enough to drown in a bathtub. You cut off the resources then you can’t face the obstacles and the challenges whether it is education or high speed rails or infra structure or anything else.”
DeLauro spoke to an audience she knew well, at a place where she felt warmly welcomed. The venue was the back porch of Len and Stephanie Farber’s house. Mrs. Farber is the vice-president of Branford’s Democratic Town Committee. With former town counsel Penny Bellamy, she co-founded the Hilltop Brigade, which has helped elect Connecticut Democrats to Congress. DeLauro said she hopes the Brigade will lend expertise and support to help take back the House of Representatives. And she said the congressional delegation is supporting Murphy in his current run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated next year by Joe Lieberman.
“We haven’t seen an increase in revenue in the last 16 years” in real terms for education and health care, DeLauro argued. “That is the problem. But you would never know it from the debate.”
She then revved up the group, saying: “local elections matter. Electing Democrats locally is critically important, which is why you are here and I am here — to support Unk and to support Andy. (Attorney Andy Campbell is running for second selectman.) What you need at the local level are people who get it. Who understand, who even in difficult times are not going to leave people hanging. Because it is not where they come from. It is a sense of ethics; it is a sense of values and that is what this issue is all about today, the soul of this nation and the role of government … that is what this is all about.”
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Rosa DeLauro is the ultimate professional politician engaging in her Washingtonian doublespeak. She can opine all she wants about the cuts to entitlement programs, but ask her to defend a foreign aid bill that gave 320 million to the new China at the expense of cutting your safety net programs and the silence will be deafening. Spare us the partisan diatribe, Rosa and get your resume ready.