Parochial Political Agendas

My US Congressman Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) responded to my call last week asking him to vote against the 'stimulus package'. His response came in the mail today:

"Unfortunately, some longtime House members saw the recovery plan as an opportunity to advance parochial political agendas. Some of these may have been good ideas, some may have been bad ideas--but we didn't get a chance to discuss them, and they weren't designed to help our economy recover in the short term. (Many of them contained new, long-term commitments.) President Obama delivered a bipartisan, win-win proposal, and congress turned it into the rare lose-lose; a plan that may fail to stimulate the economy while saddling our children and grandchildren with unprecedented debt."

We don't often agree, Rep. Cooper and I, and we still don't agree on Obama's plan being 'win-win' or that Congress's lose-lose legislation is rare, but Cooper voted no on this bloated and badly thought out plan and I'm thankful he did. Now if both of my senators would vote no I'll feel like someone's actually listening to the folks back home.