Jeff Landry’s First Move: Give the “Prince of Pork” Chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee

Dear Louisiana Tea Partiers,

Be warned: apparently, Congressman-Elect Jeff Landry has no idea what the heck he is doing or talking about:

Daily Comet: You’ve stated you support banning congressional earmarks, correct?

Jeff Landry: The issue is completely moot. The Republican majority voted unanimously to continue the current moratorium on earmarks.

(In other words, regardless of Landry’s own beliefs, the issue is moot, and even if he had supported targeted earmarks for Louisiana recovery, unfortunately, he’s already been completely neutered by the Republican majority).

Daily Comet: According to The Times-Picayune, current and former Louisiana lawmakers say an earmark ban could undermine the state’s ability to corral federal dollars and direct the Army Corps of Engineers to pay attention to the state’s special hurricane-protection and flood-control needs.

Jeff Landry: I completely disagree with that. That is not completely true. The entire Louisiana Republican house delegation supported the moratorium; therefore if it was any of them, then I can’t understand why they would make that comment. Who said it?

Daily Comet: Sen. Mary Landrieu is a supporter of earmarks, for example.

Jeff Landry: That is not surprising; she is a big tax-and-spend legislator. That’s how she got the Louisiana purchase and we ended up with Obamacare.

My special comment here: We’ve had a number of woefully unqualified and unethical people somehow find themselves representing the State of Louisiana. Jeff Landry may be a nice guy. I’ve never met him. But clearly, obviously, he’s in way over his head. From what I understand, Landry was only elected after running a vicious campaign against a retired National Guard General. Hunt Downer, in my opinion, was and still remains far more qualified for the United States Congress than Jeff Landry, and so did my friend Ravi Sangesitty. Mr. Landry appears to be nothing more than an empty suit: Confusing specifically earmarked money for disaster recovery with health care reform; maligning an attempt at equalizing and ensuring fairness in Louisiana Medicaid disbursements as if it is tantamount to corruption (seriously, what an insult; the “Louisiana Purchase” plan to which he alluded was embraced by our Republican Governor)– employing the language and the innuendo of the fringe-right in order to promote his own sense of ideological purity while completely missing the issue and undermining the people to whom he was elected to serve.  Steve Scalise and John Fleming may welcome Mr. Landry with open arms, but the rest of our delegation needs to be careful: Thus far, there’s been absolutely no evidence that Landry understands the complicated issues with which he’s dealing.

Exhibit A:

Bad news. Per the D trip:

Today, Representative-elect Jeff Landry failed the first test of his commitment to fiscal responsibility when the House Republican Conference approved Representative Hal “Prince of Pork” Rogers (R-05) to Chair the House Appropriations Committee. His hometown newspaper has called Representative Rogers the “Prince of Pork,” as a result of his 135 earmarks at a cost of $246 million in the past two years alone.

“Representative-elect Jeff Landry is responsible for supporting the “Prince of Pork” and his 135 earmarks as the chairman of the House’s spending committee,” said Ryan Rudominer of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Every day it becomes more clear that Representative-elect Jeff Landry and House Republicans are already breaking their promise to voters to get spending back on track.”

Representative Rogers and his Republican allies were responsible for turning record budget surpluses of the 1990’s into record deficits.

Highlights of Hal Rogers Fiscally Irresponsible Record

Rogers Was Named the “Prince of Pork” by Kentucky Paper. In February 2005, the Lexington Herald-Leader wrote an article entitled, “Prince of Pork; Hal Rogers Hauls Home Tax Dollars by the Billions.”  The story details Rogers’ history of being an old-fashioned politician who doles out earmarks to his supporters. Rogers’ aides estimate that Rogers has doled out $2.4 billion in earmarks since 1999. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 2/06/05]

Earmarks Galore. Rogers has pushed through 135 earmarks at a cost of $246 million in the past two years, alone. “The tiny airport that received $17 million in federal dollars but has so little traffic that the last commercial airline pulled out in February.  And then there’s the Hal Rogers Parkway, which was formerly known as the Daniel Boone Parkway before being renaming for Kentucky’s Prince of Pork.” [ABC News, 12/6/10]

Rogers wants taxpayer help for cheetahs. “U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, is sponsoring a bill to give $5 million a year to conservation groups that work overseas on behalf of endangered “great cats and rare canids,” such as cheetahs, lions and Ethiopian wolves. One group interested in applying, should Rogers’ bill become law, is the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund. Its grants administrator, Allison Rogers, is the congressman’s daughter.” [Lexington Herald Leader, 7/26/10]

Citizens Against Government Waste Names Rep. Hal Rogers August Porker of the Month in August. “Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) August Porker of the Month for sponsoring legislation that could give federal funding to his daughter’s nonprofit organization, which promotes overseas wildlife protection for cheetahs.” [CAGW, August 2010]

Rogers’ Son Was Hired By Firm While Rogers Helped Them Secure a $4 Million Contract. In 2004, Rogers’ son, John, was hired by Senture, a company that works on call centers. During the same time, Rogers was helping the company secure a $4 million contract.  Additionally, company president Christopher Deaton gave $4,200 in campaign contributions to Rogers on September 3, 2005.  [CQ MoneyLine, moneyline.cq.com, accessed 2/12/09;  New York Times, 5/2/06]

Landry hates earmarks, remember? Apparently, though, he only hates them when they benefit Louisiana. Must make the Tea Party proud!

Bobby Jindal: Road Scholar

When Bobby Jindal was campaigning for Louisiana Governor in 2007, Timmy Teepell, his Chief of Staff in Congress, liked to joke that he was a “road scholar.” It’s a clever play on words; his boss was a Rhodes Scholar, and Teepell never even enrolled in college.

Once Jindal was elected Governor, Teepell, once again, was tapped for Chief of Staff, which is, arguably, one of the most important positions in the administration. He was a home-schooled kid with a talent for basketball who, at the age of 18, decided to skip college and jump into political activism, primarily for Christian conservative causes.

Teepell is generally regarded as a hard-worker, and he’s obviously deeply loyal to Governor Jindal.

In August, Teepell took a temporary leave from his position with the Jindal Administration in order to work for the Republican Governors Association, a move that was obviously endorsed and embraced by his boss.

It’s not unusual or uncommon for an elected executive official to employ a political adviser. Most notably, President Bush employed Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, and recently, David Axelrod announced he would be departing the Obama White House; Axelrod will be replaced by David Plouffe, the man who ran Obama’s successful 2008 campaign.

But although Teepell may be a political adviser, his title, Chief of Staff, suggests a greater administrative responsibility and authority. Regardless of your politics, you have to admit: It’s highly unusual for a Governor to relinquish his Chief of Staff for a few months, even if it is during campaign season. Governor Jindal allowed, probably even wanted, his Chief of Staff to take a leave of absence in order to travel around the country promoting other political campaigns. Teepell, the original road scholar, would be back on the trail.

You have to wonder: What, exactly, does “Chief of Staff” mean for Governor Jindal and Mr. Teepell? Is it a serious position or simply a powerful-sounding title bestowed upon a loyal foot soldier?

Because if Chief of Staff is a serious position with serious, statewide responsibilities, then Governor Jindal’s decision to temporarily reassign Mr. Teepell seems to demonstrate a willingness to put his own national political ambitions over the hard work that he was elected to do here in Louisiana, only two and a half years after he was sworn in.

“You don’t think Jindal’s committed to the cause? Heck, he risked some of his own political capital and essentially donated his Chief of Staff to the Republican Governors Association.” Or so the logic would go.

But what does this say to those of us in Louisiana? In particular, what does this reveal about the seriousness of purpose with which Mr. Jindal treats his current job and the work we need to do here in Louisiana?

In fairness to Mr. Teepell, the story isn’t really about him. The overwhelming majority of Louisianans have never even heard of Timmy Teepell.

The story is about his boss. From almost the moment after he was elected Governor, Bobby Jindal has sought, even to the point of public humiliation, a desire to become a national political celebrity, a relevant and respected voice and valuable counterpoint in our national political discourse. And usually, that would be great for Louisiana.  After the national embarrassments caused by the conviction of Edwin Edwards, the rise of David Duke, the fall of Bob Livingston (a man who seemed poised to become Speaker of the House), and the more recent conviction of Bill Jefferson, Louisianans craved a credible, ethical, and intelligent leader who could prove to the rest of the nation that Louisiana would never again be a state known for corruption. To be sure, I didn’t vote for Bobby Jindal in 2007, and I most assuredly won’t vote for him in 2011.

But I understand why he was a compelling political candidate. He had a great story to tell: The son of Indian immigrants who arrived in Louisiana on student visas, an Ivy League-educated Rhodes Scholar, head of the Louisiana DHH at the age of 24, a man who wrote earnestly (albeit awkwardly), as a college student, about reconciling his Hindu tradition with his decision to convert to Catholicism. By the time Bobby Jindal was thirty, he, arguably, had the most impressive political resume of any thirty-year-old in the country. All before he ran for Governor, the first time, and all before he became a United States Congressman.

I don’t fault Mr. Jindal for his resume. On paper, it’s wildly impressive.

I didn’t vote for him in 2007 because, despite all of the titles he had held and the stellar education he had received, I didn’t think he had actually accomplished much of anything.

When he took over the DHH, as legend has it, Jindal, the wunderkind, turned a $400 million Medicaid deficit into a $220 million surplus over three years (awesomely, this Wikipedia reference links to a Rush Limbaugh quote, but you can find others). As far as I can tell, that still remains Jindal’s most important achievement: Shutting down local clinics and downsizing care for children and the disabled, all the while relying on federal support from the Clinton Administration, in order to create the appearance, on paper, of mega-million dollar profitability. As if Medicaid, a taxpayer-subsidized program, was ever and should ever be measured by how much leftover money it has, particularly considering there are, literally, disabled Louisianans suffering and dying because of lack of medical care and lack of access to care. Medicaid is about effectively and efficiently delivering coverage and care to those who could otherwise never qualify. Granted, it has been ripe for abuse, but the takeaway from Jindal’s tenure at DHH wasn’t about eliminating abuse: It was about turning a deficit into a surplus, and it completely missed the point. What were we to do with that surplus? Return it to the taxpayers? Use it as a down payment for a bond to finance improved facilities and increased services?

Jindal wasn’t a complete failure as DHH Secretary. He just never understood his job. He was fresh out of a position with one of the world’s largest corporate consulting companies, and he probably viewed his new position in terms of maximizing profitability and eliminating duplication and waste. It may seem noble, but in the context of delivering taxpayer-subsidized health care to the otherwise un-insurable chronically ill and disabled, it’s profoundly and dangerously naive to brag about “surpluses” when thousands of people are waiting in line, their lives dependent on accessing care.

Put another way, if, during his tenure as DHH Secretary, Bobby Jindal had discovered a way to reduce costs, maximize efficiencies, create a balanced budget, and ensure coverage for everyone in need (who qualified) without a single penny of federal money, then we should do away with term-limits and let the guy be Governor as long as he wants to be.

But that’s not what he did. He cut services and then championed “surpluses” that were generated, in large part, by the federal government.

Incidentally, as Governor, Bobby Jindal pushed for Senator Mary Landrieu to add $300 million in funding for Louisiana Medicaid to the recently-passed landmark health care bill, but once the provision was derided by conservatives as the “Louisiana Purchase,” Jindal stayed silent.

Bobby Jindal didn’t make Louisiana Medicaid solvent. Today, as Governor, he’s still scrambling to make cuts. Most recently, he announced his plans of pulling “more than $250 million from doctors, hospitals, and emergency services.” He needed that $300 million Mary Landrieu was attempting to provide him, but instead of standing with her and being bold, he is now also considering “reducing provider reimbursement rates, eliminating the CommunityCARE program, placing stricter limits on emergency-room visits for adults and restructuring certain financing methods.“

Put simply, Bobby Jindal is destroying the program that he had once championed as having saved. As we know now, Bobby Jindal never saved Medicaid, he just made the balance sheets look better for his boss.

I’m using Louisiana Medicaid as a prime example because it’s a program near and dear to my heart, but the same can be said about Jindal’s decisions to make massive, debilitating, perhaps even paralyzing cuts to higher education. It may take generations for Louisiana to recover from these arbitrarily-administered, across-the-board cuts to education.

A couple of days ago, Politico reported that Bobby Jindal has another bold, new proposal. He thinks Congress should be a part-time job, like your local City Council.

Why?

Because Jindal believes Congressmen should spend more time at home.

Seriously.

Again, I didn’t vote for Bobby Jindal, but I know many people who did– and I know why they did: They wanted an intelligent, full-time governor who would dig in and really tackle the problems facing Louisiana.

We’re still recovering from Katrina and Rita and Ike and Gustav.

The oil spill was a huge scare, but instead of being honest about it, Jindal used it as an opportunity to advance his own political celebrity and perpetuate ridiculously disconcerting and almost masochistic myths about the effects of a deepwater drilling moratorium, none of which turned out to be true. He spent more time posing for the cameras and tagging along with CNN than practically anyone else, yet, in his “memoir,” it’s the Obama Administration who cared about media perception, not him. As an example, he cites a letter he delivered requesting an increase for federally-subsidized food stamps, suggesting that the Obama Administration delayed on their response. According to White House officials, Jindal’s formal request was delivered on the same day that Jindal called a press conference decrying the delays. Pure political theater.

But most importantly, when Jindal says Congressmen should spend more time at home, he should probably listen to his own advice. During the last couple of years, Jindal’s become more known for the things he has done outside of Louisiana than for anything he has done here in Louisiana. Before the November elections, he spent weeks touring the country to support fellow Republican candidates, and only two weeks after the election, he embarked on yet another nationwide tour, this time promoting his memoir.

Until Bobby Jindal came along, I never realized that being Governor of Louisiana was a part-time job. I’d honestly believed, after he was elected, that he would spend the capital and credibility he had built in the national media in order to promote change in Louisiana, but it seems he’s far more interested in promoting himself.

And that’s fine. Sarah Palin’s doing the same thing.

But at least she was wise enough to realize that you can’t govern an entire state, while, at the same time, promoting yourself as a national media personality, particularly if you’re only a first-term governor with a very limited track record.

In the meantime, someone is going to have to figure out Medicaid and higher education. Someone is going to have to be able to speak to the unique needs of Louisiana, instead of merely regurgitating hackneyed and disconnected lines about the federal government.

Bobby Jindal is not the federal government. He’s the leader of the Louisiana State government, and there are real, pressing problems here in Louisiana. We can’t afford to have a governor who treats the people of his State as his own personal stepping stone to higher office, particularly if he refuses to do the real job of governing.

His ethics reform efforts were laughable. He campaigned on a promise of the “gold standard;” we didn’t realize, at the time, that this “standard” included everyone except for the Governor’s Office. He essentially gutted the State Ethics Board and reassigned much of the oversight to “administrative” law judges. His Secretary of Transportation and Development had to resign after making the controversial statement that Louisiana should compete for federal commuter rail money. Remember, Jindal had gone on national television and lampooned and lied about a rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Jindal wants us to spend tens of millions to help subsidize a poultry farm in North Louisiana that, on the face of it, seems to primarily service poultry farmers from Arkansas. He slashed millions in local, shovel-ready projects all over the State in order to subsidize a steel plant. He’s dramatically cut funding for the arts, while promoting “intelligent design” education as an alternative to evolution. He zeroed out funding for cultural centers and places that form the backbone of our thriving and emerging cultural economy.

This isn’t governing; it’s just a playground for someone else’s overly-ambitious and overtly-ideological desire to become President, or Vice President, or Secretary of Something.

And by the time 2012 rolls around, Louisiana really won’t matter. It’ll be someone else’s problem by then, right?

At this point, Louisiana isn’t about Leadership and Crisis; it’s, once again, about Crisis in Leadership.

HuffPo: Obama Team Says Jindal Claims Are Baseless

In his new book Leadership and Crisis, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal accuses the Obama Administration of focusing on politics, instead of sound policy, during the aftermath of the BP oil spill. Jindal suggests the Obama Administration, among other things, acted slowly in responding to his request for extended federal funding for food stamps. The problem is:

According to the governor’s book, Obama rebuked him in private for publicly requesting food stamp assistance during a press conference on May 1. “Careful, this is going to get bad for everyone,” Jindal quoted the president as saying.

But this appears at odds with the other communiqués that the administration and the governor’s office were having at the time. For starters, Jindal’s press conference, in which he lamented the red tape surrounding food stamps, appeared to take place the same day that he formally made the request for assistance to the administration — not exactly a lengthy period of time for the White House to take action. Even then, the administration did respond fairly quickly. On May 3, two days after Jindal wrote a letter to the Department of Agriculture “formally requesting” authorization under the Oil Pollution Act “the distribution of commodities to disaster relief agencies and the state, as is done under the Food Stamp Act of 1977,” the department’s secretary responded kindly.

He writes a letter, then, hours after he delivers the letter, he accuses the Obama Administration of being dilatory and more interested in good press. And he says all of this in a press conference and then, a few months later, he repeats these accusations in his book, which he’s currently promoting in California.

Bobby Jindal, a man who rallied against the stimulus act while, at the same time, doled out stimulus checks, was frustrated with Obama for not IMMEDIATELY responding to a request for federal food stamp funding to Tom Vilsack. Apparently, before Jindal’s letter had even been discussed, the Governor had already taken to the airwaves to criticize “red tape.” It seems a little disingenuous. Bobby Jindal wants to convince us that he cared deeply about people receiving federally-subsidized food stamps after the BP fiasco.

Sorry, not buying it.

But even if I did believe it, c’mon, at the time, it looked as if Louisiana was facing an unprecedented, cataclysmic, ecological disaster; Jindal’s angry he didn’t receive a response on his very-obviously-meritorious food stamp request within the day? Five million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and his objection is that no one immediately wrote him back about food stamps, as if there weren’t a million other contingencies that the government was handling at the time, as if it demonstrated the President was purposely snubbing him. Give me a break. If anything, his faux-indignation about food stamps, to me, clearly demonstrates that his priorities were misplaced, that he failed to adequately lead during a crisis, and that he cared more about scoring political points than anything else.

Walker Hines in 2007: “I Will Never Sacrifice My Principles for Popularity. I’m a Progressive Democrat.”

A special tip of my hat to my friend Oyster, over at the Lens, for reminding us about a letter that State Representative Walker Hines sent to the late, great Ashley Morris and the blogger Ray Shea way, way back in 2007, when the young Mr. Hines was first running for office. Quoting from Representative Hines (by way of The Lens, by way of Ray’s blog):

I will do everything in my power to prove to others that I have never overlooked where I came from and why I am where I am today. I spent a lot of time to write this e-mail and am seeking your support and endorsement.You will be pleasantly surprised by my passion, personality, background, and voting record. Unlike my opponent who tells you whatever you want to hear, I will never sacrifice my principles for popularity. I’m a progressive Democrat who believes in the Catholic values of social justice. Please work with me.

Why is this noteworthy?

Because today, Mr. Hines announced that he was defecting to the Republican Party, and in so doing, he ensured that the GOP is now the majority party in the Louisiana State House of Representatives for the first time in modern history.

Apparently, the 26-year-old State Representative is also mulling a run for Secretary of State, a seat that will be vacated once Jay Dardenne is sworn in as Lt. Governor. Some have suggested that Mr. Hines was primarily motivated by the prospect that Democrats would eliminate his seat during reapportionment. Either way, despite what Mr. Hines may say, his decision seems to be about popularity, not principles, and although it represents a largely symbolic blow to the Louisiana Democratic Party, it also reveals Walker Hines to be nothing more than a naive political opportunist, more interested in his own political career than in staying true to the principles that his constituents elected him to uphold.

As Lamar Parmentel said on The Daily Kingfish, good riddance.