Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Blunt works for congressional pay raise


Seventh District Congressman Roy Blunt did his part to make sure he and his fellow representatives will receive cost-of-living increases to boost their salaries to $170,000 annually:

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., worked the floor during the vote to make sure there was relative balance between the warring parties in delivering votes. Working through Blunt, Hoyer forced more than a dozen Republicans to switch their votes in support of accepting the raise, including Mike Pence and Daniel Burton of Indiana and Fred Upton, Dave Camp and Vernon Ehlers of Michigan.

Finally, moments after signaling with three fingers a demand for a few more GOP votes, Hoyer drew his finger across his throat as a signal for Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., to gavel the tally to a close.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Randy, you were not there, how do you know this happened? You have presented this as if you wrote it, yet you obviously were not there and could not have written it. You have not attributed it to anyone else, is this gross plagiarism of the kind you attack in others?

Randy said...

I did not present this as if I wrote it. There is clearly a link to the story and the quote is taken from the story. It has run in newspapers and on websites across the country.

Anonymous said...

Now you know why this "award winning reporter" is teaching middle school and not working at a newspaper.

Randy said...

Again, since I apparently have a couple of readers who do not have the intelligence to figure it out. One of the things I do with this blog is to find items written by the wire services, printed in other newspapers or blogs relating to this area. I found this article about Congressman Blunt, which has run in newspapers and on internet web sites across the United States, I quoted from it (using the quote function on Blogger) and provided a link to the full story. The AP story, I might add, was available to all area news sources, including the Springfield News-Leader and the Joplin Globe.

Anonymous said...

Quit your bickering. The point is the House vote avoids due consideration of whether or not to allow an automatic pay raise for Congress. (IMO) it is fiscal irresponsibility to increase Congress' pay at a time when the US Government is spending billions and billions of dollars on war, and has a stratospheric budget deficit. The minimum wage compromise no longer provides cover on this issue, since the war has dragged on and on.

The battle is not over yet. The Senate also has to act. Further, on 6/29/07, U.S. Rep. Harry Mitchell [D, Arizona] introduced legislation which would block the automatic pay raise (bill number not yet assigned).

The House voting record in favor of no debate on the automatic pay raise (H.Res.517) can be found at http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll580.xml .

Email your House representative and Senators to let them know:

No more pay increases for Congress until the War is OVER.