We’d add a “Hypocrite of the Day” feature but there would be too many candidates among the political parties for us to choose from. Even so, how can anyone resist not posting about South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who has sounded so resolute on tbe need for hard-nosed, unemotional budget cuts.
But, wait: one cut involved his state. And now he’s threatening to tie the Senate in knots on the budget:
Not all Republicans were celebrating Tuesday about the fine print of the $38.5 billion in cuts House Republicans managed to wrangle in last week’s 11th-hour budget showdown. Tea Party loyalists who wanted tens of billions more cut from this year’s spending were shaking their heads, and at least one senator was lamenting a budget omission he said would hit his state’s economy hard.
In fact, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was down right incensed over the decision not to include a mere $50,000 for an Army Corps of Engineers study on deepening the Port of Charleston in his home state and vowed to “tie the Senate in knots” by holding up Obama administration nominations.
Graham started a string of angry tweets about the omission early Tuesday. By the end of the day, he had held a press conference on the issue in Charleston, S.C., and was blaming the Obama administration for failing to include the funding in its budget proposal released in February, arguing that 260,000 jobs are tied to the port.
So his state is the only one that is going to experience hardship due to a loss of jobs? And how will the Tea Party react to this? Not too good so far:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went way off-message on Tuesday, threatening to “tie the Senate in knots” and hold up administration nominees unless lawmakers reverse just $50,000 in cuts affecting his home state that he claims would cost thousands of jobs.
Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler is not happy with Graham’s sudden burst of pro-spending zeal, telling TPM that the senator “sounds like a petulant child.”
“If it’s that important to his state, perhaps Senator Graham ought to pay the $50K out of his own pocket,” he wrote in an e-mail to TPM. “Or perhaps the citizens of his own state would like to volunteer to fund it. Or perhaps the companies who would benefit from the deepening of the port might want to fund it.”
Lindsay Graham: our hypocrite of the day — an honor that was earned.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.