An Open Letter to Lindsey Graham
I sent the following to Lindsey Graham today. I will post his response here as an update if and when I receive one.
To: Senator Lindsey Graham (R?-SC)
Re: A Huge Lump of Coal in our SC Stocking
As one of your constituents, I have strongly supported many of the things you’ve done while representing the people of South Carolina. Most recently, I was happy to see that you were one of the few to vote against the rushed reelection naming Senator McConnell as Senate Minority Leader. His performance in that role, at least since 2020, has been horrid.
That said, for a host of reasons, though mostly because of the economy and inflation, this nation is in an existential crisis. Thus, yesterday, I watched with horror as you voted for a $1.7 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill in a lame-duck Congress.
I have eight questions related to that vote and how, with this nation circling the drain in so many ways, you can possibly justify that vote as being in the best interests of the people of this state or the nation?
- How can you justify voting for a bill that emasculates an incoming Majority-Republican House of Representatives by funding the government through 2023?
- What is in the bill, packed as it is with pork and progressive give-aways, that is of such importance to you, SC, and the U.S. as to justify the bill’s eleventh-hour passage?
- What did you expect to get out of this Omnibus Bill that you believe would be an improvement over a bill that the incoming Majority Republican House of Representatives would craft? Or do you, like Mitt Romney, simply prefer a Democrat bill over anything Republicans might produce?
- Which of Nancy Pelosi’s spending priorities, all of which are written into the omnibus bill, do you support?
- Anecdotally, I just paid $10 for 18 eggs in the Charleston region. In 2022 alone, the cost of eggs has increased by almost 30%. This is worse than the Carter years. Inflation is destroying America’s poor and middle class – i.e., those people who make up the majority of SC residents. It is so bad that, according to Johns Hopkins, the U.S. is now experiencing the “sharpest decline in life expectancy in more than a century – since the eras of World War I and the Great Influenza.” So how can you possibly justify voting for a bill that, on deficit spending alone (because you and other Republicans agreed to waive rules that require commensurate revenue increases), will just add significantly to our misery?
- The optic of this $1.7 trillion Omnibus Spending Bill being made public just a few days before Congress voted on it is, frankly, obscene. Did you even read the bill, whether in whole or even in part, before voting for it?
- Do you agree that inflation is a function of government deficit spending? If you do agree, do you care? Or do you subscribe to some new economic theory that you believe explains the inflation running rampant? I think all of your constituents have a right to know your thinking on this.
- How long do you think the world will continue to rely on the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency if the dollar is increasingly devalued by its own government? What will the consequence be for the people of the U.S. and South Carolina?
Image: YouTube screen grab.
