The height of GOPocrisy
Michigan Republican Mike Rogers chairs the House Intelligence Committee and recently said the Republican shutdown of the federal government “is putting America’s national security at risk”.
“Removing government funding is impacting intelligence staff which is making our nation less safe,” Rogers’ spokeswoman Kelsey Knight said Thursday. “He believes shutting down is putting America’s national security at risk.”
Politico has more:
Rogers said he was “frustrated” with the shutdown, which he called a “visible spectacle of incompetence” from all sides, and which has led to the furloughs of intelligence staff and made the nation less safe.“To me, that’s unconscionable. I just don’t think that we ought to put America’s national security at risk while we have these discussions, and we ought to get this thing done as soon as we can,” Rogers said.
However, the Detroit Free Press’s Brian Dickerson asked him this week why, if he feels that way, does he not join other sane Republicans in calling for a “clean CR (continuing resolution)” that decouples funding the government from other extremist Republican demands.
His response? Crickets.
“I just don’t think this is the smartest, best way for us to get what we want done,” Rogers told Mike Huckabee on the former Arkansas governor’s nationally syndicated radio show the day after the shutdown began. Two days later, Rogers spokeswoman Kelsey Knight, underlined her boss’s anxiety over the GOP strategy, opining that the shutdown “is putting America’s national security at risk.”Yet today, as the shutdown lurches toward its third week, Rogers has yet to join the two dozen other House Republicans who have publicly declared their support for a “clean CR” — a continuing spending resolution that would reopen the government immediately with no strings attached. […]
On Friday, I called and e-mailed Rogers’ spokeswoman to ask whether her boss wasn’t trying to have it both ways — distancing himself from the GOP shutdown strategy without committing to a vote that would end it.
If Rogers really believes a shutdown threatens national security, I asked Knight, isn’t his reluctance to throw in with other clean-CR renegades a clear case of exalting his party’s interests over the country’s?
As of Friday evening, neither the congressman nor his spokeswoman had responded.
It’s the height of political hypocrisy for Rogers to sit on the sidelines when, as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee he has determined that the shutdown orchestrated by his colleagues puts the country’s security at risk.
If you are in Lansing tomorrow, Wednesday, October 16th, the Greater Lansing Labor Council will hold a picket to call on GOP Rep. Mike Rogers and the Republican leadership to end the federal government shutdown. They will meet at Congressman Mike Rogers’ Office at 1000 West St. Joseph Street in Lansing at noon. You can RSVP by emailing Glenn Freeman at gllcaflcio@sbcglobal.net.
