October 11, 2005

Naifeh-esque

My first thought in seeing this was, "this is very Naifeh-esque."

In a cliffhanger vote held open by Republican leaders until they won, the U.S. House of Representatives passed by two votes on Friday a bill giving U.S. oil refineries incentives to expand.

The legislation, written by Republican Joe Barton of Texas, was barely approved, 212-210, even after Barton dropped a White House-backed provision that would have gutted clean air rules for refineries to expand existing plants.

In fact, what was supposed to be a five minute vote was held open for almost 50 minutes. It looked almost like there were some "back room" dealings going on so that they could convince three House members (Reps. Wayne Gilcrest (R-MD), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) and Jim Gerlach (R-PA)) to change their votes.

The first thing it reminded me of was the vote being held open during the "income tax wars" here in Tennessee while Speaker Naifeh and company attempted to make back room deals in order to convince several lawmakers to change their votes in favor of the income tax. Luckily, that attempt wasn't successful.

Before anyone thinks that I'm taking the Democrats side here, you're wrong. I think that whatever party is in power, there will be corruption and abuses of power, but it's up to the citizens to call them out on it while putting party preference aside. If you are a Conservative, you'd better be the first one to call them out on it.

Want to see the video? Search no further...it's right here.

(ht: Nashville is Talking)

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