Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Lost in the headlines about the Fiscal Cliff and the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was the gubernatorial appointment to the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Jim DeMint. Sen. DeMint was arguably the Tea Party’s Senator and his impending departure from the Senate to accept the position to head up the Heritage Foundation would have left a gaping hole in the Tea Party’s influence in the Senate. There is nothing to worry about because South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley named Tea Party Congressman Tim Scott to replace DeMint in the Senate. Rep. Scott was just elected to the House of Representatives in 2010 and has already made a big name for himself in the Tea Party world by suggesting that President Obama should be impeached if Obama attempted to go around the House of Representatives during the last debt ceiling fiasco!
Rep. Scott should fit into Sen. DeMint’s shoes very nicely. Mr. Scott has gone out of his way to back unlimited access to guns and could not imagine a world without Billion dollar subsidies to the big oil companies. “Scott and his Republican allies in Congress voted repeatedly last year to protect more than $50 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil corporations. When ThinkProgress asked Scott whether it was fair to do that, especially at a time when oil companies are earning tens of billions in profit every quarter, the Tea Party freshman defended the industry: “fair is a relative word,” said Scott.” Think Progress Let me make sure that we understand Rep. Scott’s position here. He has no qualms over giving billions to the oil companies, but this same man of the people, proposed a bill in 2011 that would kick an entire family off of food stamps if it was “discovered” that one family member had gone out on a strike!
“Much of the bill is based upon verifying that those who receive food stamps benefits are meeting the federal requirements for doing so. However, one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer:
This bill would have not only put needy families in even more financial distress, it would have had a chilling effect on the rights of workers to engage in collective bargaining with their employers. I thought that the Tea Party was supposed to be patriots for the people and a defender against Big Government takeovers and intrusions into our lives. You can imagine my shock when I discovered that Rep. Scott was a co-sponsor of the bill that would strip food stamps from needy families while at the same time gladly handing out billions to large oil corporations.
This same Tea Party “patriot” when he was a South Carolina state representative backed a proposal to cut South Carolina’s entire HIV/AIDS budget that ended up negatively impacting the lives of more than 2,000 South Carolina citizens who were HIV positive. Without these needed funds, the ill citizens would have increased difficulty in paying for their life saving medications. Rep. Scott was undeterred by the fact that these fellow South Carolina citizens might actually die without these funds. It didn’t matter to him that his state was one of the worst states in the nation for AIDS cases.
Soon to be Senator Tim Scott is also a staunch defender of the so-called “traditional marriage” and solidly anti-gay. Of course, that has nothing to do with his decision to back the bill to strip the HIV/AIDS funds from the budget! Rod 2.0
This man of the people was backed in his election bid to the Congress by Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. With friends like that, his radical and out of touch agenda is not a surprise. From Rep. Scott’s resume, it seems that South Carolina will be getting a Jim DeMint twin and the far-right policies that Sen. DeMint espoused are safe in his hands. Rep. Scott, as suggested earlier, is also a very big supporter of unregulated guns.
“In his one term in the U.S. House and his tenure in South Carolina politics, Senator-Designate Tim Scott (R-SC) has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s strongest opponents of gun restrictions. On his campaign website, the card-carrying NRA member notes his strong support of the right to bear arms and promises to fight attempts to weaken gun rights “in any way.” Think Progress
I think Sen. DeMint will be pleased that a chip off of the old block will be replacing him in the United States Senate. However, in a Congress that is almost totally dysfunctional, is Senator Designate Scott really the right way to go? What do you think about any Senator taking such a harsh stance on gun control or on gay rights? When a majority of gun owners agree that common sense gun controls are needed, how can a United State Senator be so out of touch with his fellow gun owners? Is this really a prime example of corporate money getting what it pays for? What do you think of our latest United States Senator? Merry Christmas to all!!