Tipsheet

The 11 Moral Senators

The Senate held a vote this evening to investigate how/why Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D.-N.D.) got special VIP mortgage discounts unavailable to the typical working Joe.

Only 11 senators cared enough about you and your money to bother investigating the motives behind Dodd's $300 billion mortgage bailout.

70 said they didn't think it was worth doing. The rest either voted "present" or didn't show up.  Will post the names of the 11 who cared soon. You can assume, just by odds alone, your senator didn't.

DeMint makes a statement on the "shameful" vote: “A lot of people clearly want to rush this bill through, and this vote is going to make people wonder how many others in Congress have something to hide. The Senate just voted to blindly pass a bill without any understanding of how hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars will be spent. Americans are so tired of waste and corruption, but today’s vote was 'hear no evil, see no evil… just pass the pork'."

If you view the Senate Ethics website HERE you can see the Senate places a much higher priority investigating Republican sex scandals than possible misuse of $300 billion taxpayer dollars.

(I'm not defending the Craig/Vitter sex scandals, I'm just pointing out those issues were deemed worthy of investigation, but the possible bad motives behind a  $300 billion bailout, apparently, are not.)

Update: Here are the 11 names. If they are your senator, write them a letter to thank them.

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Coburn (R-OK)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Inhofe (R-OK)
McConnell (R-KY)*
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)


*A Senate source said McConnell waited to the end of the vote to weigh in. As Minority Leader he may have been able to whip more votes is he exercised more, ahem, leadership himself.