| San Angelo sits squarely in the 11th District where Mike Conaway is facing "No One" for his first re-election. Just to the north, however, is the 19th District where Prairie Dog Republican Randy Neugebauer is snoozing his way towards another term of ignoring the people in his district.
If Washington lacks balance - and if the SAST says it does, then it must - then Randy Neugebauer is a huge part of the problem. He proudly boasts he is "the most conservative member of Congress" - which is true if you think "conservative" means the same thing as "Republican".
SAST continues:
The GOP Congress has indulged without quibble President Bush's more monarchical instincts, eroding its own prerogatives in the process, The president, in turn, has indulged Congress' determination to spend and borrow until the last Chinese bank account is stuffed with U.S. Treasury IOUs. In six years of worsening Congresses, this one has been the most feckless.
It has set a modern record for being at work the least amount of time - in session only 100 days this year. Even the legendary 1948 ''Do Nothing'' Congress met for 110 days. While the House especially busied itself with meaningless votes intended to play to Republican supporters and donors - flag burning, gay marriage, the Pledge of Allegiance - the real business of the country was going undone. Congress has two duties each year - pass a budget for the government in the spring and pass the 12 spending bills to fund that budget by Oct. 1. This Congress never got around to the budget and still hasn't passed 10 of the spending bills.
Congress has presided over the largest expansion of government entitlements since the Great Society, the largest per-capita increase in federal spending since the Great Society, record federal deficits and a record national debt. Congress has refused to re-instate basic budget restraints that expired on its watch in 2002. Bush has opted to use his veto power only once - to halt federal support for stem-cell research.
The House Republican leadership has an uncanny ability to look the other way when two of its members sold favors, another behaved inappropriately with pages and well-heeled lobbyists dictated legislation. Even some conservative Republicans believe their party needs to lose in November to shock it back to core principles.
The objection to the Republicans losing one or both houses of Congress is that it will result in gridlock. Gridlock during the Clinton administration, with each side curbing the other's worst instincts, resulted in four years of budget surpluses, a diminishing national debt and the landmark welfare reform bill. Gridlock can't be worse than what we have now.
Gridlock can't be worse than what we have now. Wow. That's quite an indictment of the current misrepresentation of America.
I know time is getting short and people are re-directing their funds to where they think it will do the most good. I'd like to encourage you to help us steal a seat from a snoozing Republican in Tx-19. I need thirty people who will give $5 a week through our Act Blue page. Thirty people who are more willing to fight the war against extremism than to buy one soda a day for the week or to see one movie without popcorn or cokes.
Thirty people who want to change the world. San Angelo knows it's time for change. You know it's time for change. Now it's time to make the change happen.
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