Buck Skips
Lately, Our Man finds Discretion the Better Part of Valor
This won’t be the first time we’ve pointed out certain inconsistencies between what Ken Buck says, and how he votes. The biggest example, of course, is that Buck claims to hate the National Debt more than anything. Yet he voted for the Trump Tax Scam bill, which gives tax cuts primarily to corporations and the upper middle class by increasing deficit spending and blowing up the National Debt. Then he made up for it by voting NO on a string of spending bills.
However, lately, Buck appears to find reconciling his ideology, the wishes of his President, and common sense to be difficult. Neither a YES vote or a NO vote will do in some cases. So twice in the last two months, he’s punted. He toes the partly line most of the time, but Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado has skipped not one but two major votes since April 12.
They weren’t little bitty votes. Oh, no. These were potentially the two most impactful votes of his career. But Ken chose not to vote. They were:
- Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment (12-May-2018)
- The 2018 Farm Bill (18-May 2018)
WTFarm Bill?
OK, the Congressman representing the vast rural grasslands of Colorado’s Eastern Plains is skipping votes on the Farm Bill? Ken, Ken, your people need you! Not only has all the loose talk about NAFTA (which benefits Colorado farmers) given your constituents the jitters, and made them really need to feel secure about farm subsidies, but work requirements for SNAP are kind of an issue here in CD4 as well. Over 8% of households receive SNAP benefits, and if you live in sparsely populated Washington County, for example, and your pickup breaks down, how are you going to meet those work requirements?
The House Farm Bill, to be sure, was never going to pass the Senate. And there were dueling versions running around, and somehow the whole mess got tangled up with DACA extensions, even though the Farm Bill and DACA seem like unrelated issues.
DACA is problematic for Ken, of course. Colorado suffers from a general labor shortage, and a shortage of farm workers in particular. So the interest of his constituents, rich and poor, is to provide legal status for Dreamers, preferably with a path to citizenship. But he THINKS his base wants to deport everybody with a deep tan, like Trump does. Tough choice, ain’t it, Kenny?
The analysis above from Govtrack sheds a little light on this subject. Though Buck talks like a big ideologue, his actual votes place him near the center of his party on policy, and running at the back of the pack on leadership. Far from being the Libertarian Cowboy he likes to portray, Buckeroo is pretty much all hat.
Budget? What balanced budget?
We’d have thought that voting for Trump’s Balanced Budget Amendment would be a no-brainer for Buck. First of all, he’s advocated a balanced budget since long before Trumpism was a thing. And even if, deep in his crabbed little heart, Buck knows that a modern economy needs the ability to deficit spend, it seems pretty safe to vote for the amendment at this stage. After all, to become law the amendment has to be passed by the Senate and ratified by 3/4 of the states. In today’s political climate, the latter is nearly impossible.
So the balanced budget amendment should be a win-win-win for Buck. He gets to curry favor with the president, tout his fiscal conservatism, and be accountable for nothing. It’s really hard to figure why Buck didn’t vote YES.
It’s possible, of course, that with rare insight, Buck realized the Balanced Budget Amendment would be unpopular to the point of ridicule, and that its attempt to paint over the obvious fiscal irresponsibility of this Congress would fool nobody (‘ware paywall). But after all his public statements touting the idea of a balanced budget, he could hardly vote NO. So he skipped the vote, hoping that nobody would notice.
The Last Analysis
Here’s another juicy bit from the folks at Govtrack.
It turns out that in his time in Congress, Buck has skipped fully 4% of House roll call votes, nearly double the lifetime average for his colleagues currently serving. He votes with the President 86% of the time. When he goes off the reservation it’s in the direction of hard-line fiscal conservatism. He voted against hurricane relief for Texas and for Puerto Rico. He voted against several interim appropriations bills.
In the entire 115th Congress Buck opposed the President on matters of policy only twice: FOR sanctions on Russia, and and AGAINST allowing concealed carry permits to be valid across state lines. We applaud these two votes, in which it seems Buck may actually be respecting the opinions of his constituents. But it would be better still, if he respected our needs.
This may be our last analysis before the primary vote. After that, we’ll know who’s coming after him — who the new Sheriff in town will be. Whoever it is, we know there will be more under their hat to analyze.
