Lincoln Diaz-Balart Spends More Easily On Friends
Florida Republican Lincoln Diaz-Balart likes to put on the pose of an anti-spending deficit hawk. As the year drew to a close last year, Diaz-Balart spoke in opposition to spending created by the economic stimulus bill, complaining that “the American people are left footing the bill for this wasteful and ill-conceived spending program”. Days before that, he warned of “massive new spending programs” created by the Democrats.
Of course, Lincoln Diaz-Balart never had a problem with George W. Bush’s massive spending programs, like the war in Iraq and the creation of a bloated Homeland Security bureaucracy. He voted in favor of those without a peep of protest.
In fact, Diaz-Balart favors big government spending – just so long as it’s being done in his congressional district, and benefits his political allies. For the fiscal year 2009, Representative Diaz-Balart requested 26 earmarks for congressional spending in his district. Those include an earmark for the Arise Foundation, which purports to teach “Life Management Skills”.
Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his brother Mario (also a U.S. Representative) have accepted donations from Susan and Edmund Benson, the founders and directors of the Arise Foundation. Perhaps this relationship helps Diaz-Balart see beyond his opposition to federal government spending that he applies to the rest of the nation. What we need on Capitol Hill, however, are leaders who can apply the same principles of spending for the nation as a whole and for the districts they represent.
Boy, that sure looks like favor-trading to me. This is not an action worthy of the trust placed in Lincoln Diaz-Balart by Florida voters.