Ridiculous criticism of federal spending bill is window into GOP collapse

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Here’s some of what Rep. Claudia Tenney, who represents part of Niagara County, mocks the Democrats’ socialist spending spree:

$750,000 to Niagara University to establish science labs and classrooms at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

$900,000 to realign and extend a taxiway at Niagara Falls International Airport.

$1.4 million for Niagara University’s Academic Innovation Hub.

$2 million for advanced radiation technology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

$2 million for a combined wastewater treatment plant in the city of Concord.

There’s more, but you get the idea. Tenney, a Republican representing the 24th congressional district, thinks that kind of spending qualifies as socialism. North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik is no better. The No. 3 Republican since the party spat on former Rep. Liz Cheney’s patriotism, Stefanik said the new federal spending bill is part of the Democrats’ hardline agenda. No wonder the new Republican House is in such disarray.

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Most Republicans voted against the bill. Among the more thoughtful party members who backed him were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and, closer to home, former Rep. Chris Jacobs, R-27th District.

It’s not that the bill demanded effusive and unconditional support from all sides; legitimate criticism is always possible. Jacobs offered one that has long been appropriate, regardless of which party is in control: This is not the way we should be handling things: a 4,000-page document that comes to us at the last minute. He is right. The system should work better.

But Jacobs also recognized a fundamental problem: There will certainly be things in this that I won’t be happy about, but I believe we have an obligation to make government work.

What concept: A congressman from an organization with 434 other voting members acknowledges that he might not get everything he wants in a spending bill serving a population of some 338 million people. This is what used to be called normal.

That’s what’s so unfortunate about comments like Stefaniks and Tenneys. Not only did they have objections, but they had to dress them up in the puppet finery of partisan ostentation, while ignoring the essentials.

It’s not uncommon for politicians to grab an easy no when they think it will serve their partisan goals, of course. It was obvious that the bill was going to pass and the government would be funded, so that Tenney, Stefanik and others could vote against it and stand in the false glow of ideological purity.

For the record, Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo and the Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York voted for the measure.

Was it too much money? Maybe. With a total of $1.7 trillion, that was certainly a lot. Could it have been better? Absolutely. But elections matter. Congress, though it’s hard to say right now, matters too. Funding the government cannot be an option, especially when it drags on the issue of paying the debts of nations that have been incurred by members of both parties in both houses of Congress.

Congress has recently experimented with abolishing expenses that enable such efforts as the preservation of the First Presbyterian Church at Buffalos Symphony Circle. But that was unsustainable in such a large and diverse nation.

Some call the system retrograde: I will vote for your project if you vote for mine. That’s part of it. As conservative columnist George Will observed in 2021, appropriations are the grease that lubricates the gears of Congress. The machine sometimes produces unfortunate results, it’s true, but it also builds relationships and gets things done. It enables governance.

It’s a shame that Tenney, Stefanik and most of the other members of the Republican House didn’t have the common sense that Jacobs showed with his vote and his observations. New Yorkers and all Americans deserve better.

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