Well, folks... I finally heard back from Nan directly early this past Friday morning.
Dr. Hayworth sent me two emails in fact - one sent at 12:32 a.m. and the other two minutes later, at 12:34 a.m.
(Hey... gotta give her props for working late into the night!)
Interestingly enough... Nan didn't actually address me as such!
Rather, she chose to utilize emails written to her by a fellow conservative both of us know as the springboard to forward her replies to... er... him.
The only direct response to anything I personally wrote to her or posted on my blog was an assurance that no, taxpayers wouldn't be picking up the tab for her (current? upcoming?) trip to Israel.
(The trip is being paid for by the American Israel Educational Foundation...)
Anyway, folks... here's the email I sent to Nan on Thursday, August 4, which she did - in a fashion - respond to:
Nan,
Since you haven't replied to any of my emails in awhile and since you keep on ignoring my advice and frankly my pleas regarding policy, let me just ask you... has it not yet occurred to you that maybe... just perhaps... the Boehner/McConnell leadership is... oh... INCOMPETENT?
I mean, hey... the market ONLY went down 265 points the day after you "helped" John Boehner "save" the economy.
And, hey... the market ONLY went down... what... 512 points today...
(*SHRUG*)
Seriously, Nan, what's it take to get through to you?
I just cruised on over to your official website. You're quoted as saying, "Irresponsible spending must stop."
Nan. You just voted for a "plan" that if "successful" will... er... "only" add a "bit" over $7 trillion dollars to the existing National Debt over the next 10 years. You seem to be operating in some alternate "Nan in Wonderland" reality where down is up and more is less.
Nan. My views are made quite clear day in and day out via my blog. I'll never talk behind your back. When I have a problem with you - as I do now - I'll never hesitate to either contact you directly, comment publicly upon my blog, or do both. I hope that you appreciate that unlike most of the people you must deal with on a regular basis now that you're in that cesspool we call our nation's capital... with me... what you see is what you get.
By the way... your upcoming trip to Israel... I do hope that the taxpayers aren't footing the bill. Congressional junkets have always to my mind been inappropriate - but especially nowadays... what with you and your colleagues destroying the nation's economy... free travel on top of roughly a quarter-million dollars in pay and benefits (including retirement funding) would be wildly irresponsible and a poke in the eye to taxpayers such as myself.
Nan. It's not too late for you to change course. There's still time for you to be the congresswoman whom I and many others thought we were voting for.
BILL BARKER
Direct... to the point... wouldn't you all agree?
And of course I could post many more of my personal emails to Nan, which, along with public blog posting, present a clear record of my questions for, and commentary directed to, Dr. Nan Hayworth (R-NY-19).
It's within the context of that reality that I ask those of you reading this to tell me what you make of the following direct (excerpted from two separate emails) reply from Congresswoman Hayworth to... er... another constituent:
I am in a position of grave responsibility. There is no conspiracy to capitulate to the President; the American people have been dragged into a dangerous place through unwise decisions made for decades by Congresses and administrations past. Reality is harsh right now and we have to slog through this morass, which will take years to exit.
You didn't sign up for this, but you are being made to pay for it because of the (well-meaning) ignorance and poor judgment of others who have outnumbered us.
Think of it as analogous to our having been forced to make a very deep dive towards the bottom of the fiscal ocean and having to rise gradually in order to avoid getting the bends.
Our problem is fairly straightforward to identify and quantify: the federal government takes too much and spends too much, it is too invasive, it has gone far beyond its Constitutional role and it needs to shrink and become more efficient.
Our problem is also very difficult to resolve - in the first place, because we are without a Senate majority and a President to cooperate fully with what the House majority would do if it were acting alone.
Our situation in Congress is not analogous to a business owner. Our situation is equivalent to your business being run not by you singly, but by you with two other people, who feel very different than you do, who are just as adamant about their philosophy as you are, and whose assent you must have before moving forward. Irrespective of your own personal resolve or passion, you will simply not be able to do exactly what you would do on your own.
Another fact that makes resolution extremely difficult is the stark reality that we cannot balance the federal budget without compromising what we have promised to our seniors, our troops, and our veterans. Bluntly, Michele Bachmann, and every other prominent political figure who advocates no increase in the debt ceiling, is wrong.
I learned that quickly very soon after I entered Congress and the full facts became available to me. Even if we take the rest of the federal budget to zero, which would be disruptive in and of itself (while I would readily close the Departments of Education and Energy, for example, it would be impossible to administer Social Security and Medicare without some federal infrastructure, for one thing among many others), we still would be unable to pay sovereign debt, fund Social Security and Medicare and veterans' benefits, and pay our troops if we were to balance the federal budget immediately.
Much as a balanced budget is our goal, towards which the passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment (a vote on which is required in the Budget Control Act we just passed) - which I have co-sponsored since my first week in office - will be a great advance, we would do the public a disservice to renege on what our seniors, veterans, and troops count on.
It is true that the federal government has far more, and more costly, commitments than it can afford, but unwinding most of these commitments will take years, even working as fast as we can; too many seniors are incapable of going without the benefits they have come to expect.
It is also true that it is current and future taxpayers on whose dollars Social Security and Medicare depend to pay for these benefits, which go far beyond what the beneficiaries have paid into the system during their working lives - the programs were never age-indexed at their inception, which would have prevented some of this problem. But they weren't indexed, and our seniors need them, and we have to pay for them.
As things stand now, Medicare is the single fastest-growing segment of the federal budget. It already dwarfs oft-mentioned and frequently maligned foreign aid, which is 1% of the budget.
[A past] comment about having a house being the American dream is emblematic of our challenge. In service of that concept, past administrations and Congresses took on obligations to back mortgages and the housing industry that have now necessitated close to 150 billion taxpayer dollars to fulfill, and the cost continues to increase.
I personally am an advocate of getting the federal government out of the mortgage/housing sector, but a plan to wind down that involvement will take several years to carry out because so many Americans have come to depend on the government to back their mortgages.
We can make progress and we are making progress. We can do more and faster if we have a small-government majority in the Senate and if we have a small-government President.
I continue to believe that the Republican Party represents the cause of small government far more than does the Democratic Party, and the Tea Party has made a significant contribution to our political discourse and to the achievement of a Republican majority in the House.
Independent voters - some of whom are Tea Party members, to be sure - also played a big role.
I am responsible to all of our citizens in the District to do my best for them. We do have a very difficult several months and years ahead of us, and I am going to be honest with you about what I am learning and what I am doing and why, as I have been all along.
I would like to tell you that we could afford not to raise the debt ceiling, but that simply isn't true.
I would like to tell you that we can balance the federal budget right away without hurting our seniors, our veterans, or our troops, but that simply isn't true.
I would like to tell you that I personally can accomplish everything we would like to see done by dint of determination alone, but that simply isn't true either.
We need a Senate and a President and we need to hold the House, and in the meantime I will continue to work my heart out every day and to be accountable to you at every step.
I have not distanced myself from the Tea Party; my relationship to the Tea Party has always been straightforward. I am a member of the Hudson Valley Patriots and I have always readily made that clear when I am asked about the Tea Party.
I share the Tea Party's reverence for the Constitution and their goal of bringing the federal government back to its intended size and scope; that is the fundamental bond.
I did not join the Tea Party caucus for a number of reasons: first, it is true that I am defined by more than being a Tea Party member, as well as by more than being a doctor, being a mother, being from Westchester County, being a Lutheran, and any number of other discrete traits or descriptors. I am first and foremost the representative working in behalf of every citizen in the 19th District, irrespective of their affiliation, and it is important always to be mindful of that.
Second, I have felt that the Tea Party caucus was on some level Michelle Bachmann's show, and I maintain that she acts against the best interests of our Conference and of our cause. She has directed fire upon her House colleagues in ways that have been both unwarranted and damaging. She is correct that we have not accomplished nearly as much as any of us would have liked to, but to imply that this relative lack of progress is due to a lack of dedication on the part of the House Republicans is utter nonsense, and toxic to boot.
The real impediment to progress is the fact that we hold but one of the three levers of federal legislation, and Senator Reid and President Obama still wield power that checks that of the House, irrespective of our level of passion or dedication. Therefore, we need to turn that passion towards changing the Senate and the President, so that we can achieve our goals more fully and more rapidly.
For the reason just stated, we did not - regrettably, to be sure - have the leverage that we needed to pass Cut, Cap, and Balance (CCB) through the Senate. Mr. Reid is not responsive to public pressure to that degree. Changing the Senate majority in the next election is the answer.
Regarding expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, we intend in the House to continue them and we will fight for that. I am confident that the Select Committee will not be able to raise net taxes that way or any other way.
We have great opportunities to make the tax code flatter and fairer, to close loopholes and lower overall rates, and that is what I have advocated for in the national and local media and will join my House GOP colleagues to fight for as the Committee does its work.
Which brings me to the issue of political courage: it takes substantial intestinal fortitude to do what I have determined is right when it would be easier politically to do the opposite. On Monday afternoon, when we had more than enough votes to pass the Budget Control Act (which I have felt all along we needed to do, for the reasons specified in the previous Email), I could have changed my "yes" vote to a "no," but I didn't.
It might have been politically palatable to vote "no" when the Act was going to pass anyway, but I felt that I had to take responsibility for affirming the Budget Control Act, so I kept my vote as it was.
Back in January I explained to the Patriots that I had learned that we had to raise the debt ceiling, as soon as I understood what we were dealing with we did the right thing - not the fun thing, not the exciting thing, and not the big thing that constitutional conservatives would like to see happen - but we did the best thing we could do under the circumstances.
I am a voice both nationally and locally (as you can see on our congressional Facebook page) for the small-government, free-enterprise philosophy, Chip. I'm a voice that seeks to unite and not divide, to attract support and not to alienate, to find common ground rather than to stake out a position behind the barricades. In that way I am indeed different from Rep. Bachmann, Senator DeMint, and Governor Palin, and I don't apologize for that.
We need to build on the progress we have made, to broaden the movement - and that requires the kind of tact, wisdom, humor, and good nature that President Reagan deployed so skillfully in the nation's service, and that is sadly lacking among some of our most prominent conservatives. I take my cue and inspiration from him, and I'm doing all I can to emulate a welcoming, affirmative, positive, constructive attitude.
A few points in reply:
First... somehow I don't remember this dislike - indeed seeming contempt - for Michelle Bachmann expressed by Candidate Hayworth.
Indeed, it breaks my heart to read Dr. Hayworth's repudiation of honorable Americans such as Michele Bachmann, Jim DeMint and Sarah Palin.
Basically Dr. Hayworth seems to want it both ways with regard to her connection in the public mind to the Tea Party Movement. On the one had she's a member of "a" Tea Party - The Hudson Valley Patriots - but on the other hand she seems to think that Tea Party positions defended from the national stage are... um... unworthy and unbecoming of er... a doctor, a mother, being from Westchester County, being a Lutheran...
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
Anyway, folks, you'll notice Nan fails to respond to my point about her vote adding to, rather than subtracting from, our nation's National Debt over the next 10 years.
(*SIGH*)
You'll also notice that Dr. Hayworth fails to directly address the McConnell issue except as to note what we all know... the Republicans don't as yet control the Senate.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Notice any lack of comment concerning the tanking of the stock market following the the "deal" she supported.
Notice the complete failure of this self-described constitutionist to address any of the constitutional questions swirling around this "Special Committee" that the Boehner-McConnell-Obama-Reid-Pelosi "deal" sets up.
(*DEEP SORROWFUL SIGH*)
Folks... I could go on and on, but you get the point; as far as I can tell, Dr. Nan Hayworth (R-NY-19) has been "captured" by the forces of Dempublican-Republicrat "bipartisan cooperation."
Is it simply that she doesn't understand the reality that I present each day here via my stand-alone posts and newsbites? I truly wish I could believe that, but... she's a doctor for God's sake... I simply find it hard to believe that she doesn't understand the reality I so clearly share with each of you day in and day out!
In any case, folks, I'm gonna keep on sending Congresswoman Hayworth emails... I'm gonna keep on addressing her via my blog and I'm gonna keep on putting out a blog which gives readers the sort of factual information and keen perspective...
(Yeah, yeah... I never claimed not to have a ginormous ego!)
(*HUGE FRIGG'N GRIN*)
...necessary for anyone who wants to avoid being "rolled" by the politicians and their media parasites.
In the meantime, folks... keep reading!
(Yeah... you too, Nan...!)
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