Melissa Bean: 100 Hours Later

The Cook County Republican Party has just circulated an email (again not posted on the main website) talking about Rep. Melissa Bean. She hasn't been discussed much on this blog but she is the incumbent from the 8th district of Illinois. In I believe 2004 she defeated incumbent representative Phil Crane analysis from that period of time suggest that he was out of touch with his constituents.

Any way the email starts off with this...

WASHINGTON - Congresswoman Melissa Bean (D-IL), despite promising to put her district's interests first in Washington, cast the following votes in the first 100 hours of Democrat control of Congress, siding exclusively with her party's leadership, rather than the voters of the 8th District of Illinois:

"Unfortunately, Congresswoman Bean has already been strong-armed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and the Democrats' liberal leadership," said Jessica Boulanger, NRCC Communications Director. "Melissa Bean's constituents should insist that she represent their values, not engage in bitter partisanship at the expense of doing what's right for them."

Under this was listed some bullet points of measures that she voted on. These are the ones that caught my eye...

- Voted to make it easier to impose massive tax hikes on the American people (House Roll Call 4)

I'm not a fan of taxes. I really am not a fan of tax increases.

- Voted against providing affordable health care to uninsured working families (House Roll Call 10)

Interesting, I have to figure out what this means. Health care is the Democrat's pet issue more than it seems to be with Republicans why would they be against providing affordable healthcare to uninsured working families.

- Voted against the interests of America's small businesses and their ability to create jobs and provide affordable health care to their workers (House Roll Call 17)

Hmm a long way from supporting the mom and pops and entrepreneurship. I have to look into this some more.

- Voted to restrict seniors' access to life-saving drugs as well as access to their neighborhood community pharmacist (House Roll Call 22)

This again would be under health care. What is the logic of this?

- Voted to allow convicted felons to receive student loan benefits (House Roll Call 29)

Just to let to ex-cons know. Take advantage. And BTW, this is not necessarily something I'm against provided that ex-cons want to better themselves.

- Voted against increasing college access and affordability for middle- to low-income students, against providing greater resources for Pell Grants, and against deficit reduction on behalf of taxpayers (House Roll Call 31)

Now this is something I and many other students can use. Access to Pell Grants and less loans. What is the logic of voting against this?

- Voted for $6.5 billion in new taxes on American energy producers, for higher energy prices for American consumers, voted to stifle domestic energy production, and increase America's dependence on foreign sources of energy (House Roll Call 40)

You know, I really think we need to get away from consuming foreign oil. Particularly from the middle East which is the source of some of America's troubles. Unfortunately if American companies attempt to drill in places like Alaska, someone will cry, "We're destroying the environment!"

You know I need to do more research on some of these measures. BTW I'll add one more and this doesn't interest me as much but I'm sure it's of interest to many people right now...

- Voted to turn over United States homeland security protections to the United Nations (House Roll Call 14)

This one was really between the affordable health care and interests of small businesses.