Sam Graves

KCTV sums it up:

HOUSE DECISION WOULD RAISE YOUR TAXES

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -The U.S. House of Representatives failed to take action Tuesday to extend the payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits for millions.

The House rejected a two-month extension to 160 million Americans on their payroll taxes. This means if you made $50,000 annually then you'll pay about $1,000 more in taxes in 2012.

The Senate-approved bill would have allowed millions of unemployed Americans to continue receiving jobless benefits.

This afternoon, in a purely political move, House republicans voted to hike taxes on 160 million working Americans effective January 1 by rejecting the Senate's extension of the payroll tax cut.

By a final vote of 229 - 113, including Rep. Akin, Rep. Emerson, Rep. Graves, Rep. Hartzler, Rep. Long, and Rep. Luetkemeyer, republicans violated their pledge of not raising taxes.

Because keeping things exactly the same has worked out great for our economy so far.

Such talk terrifies Republicans, who argue additional deficit spending is the last thing the economy needs. U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, said he would oppose additional cuts in payroll taxes.

“All I want to do is keep things exactly the way they are and not increase things,” Graves said.

Given that Rep. Todd Akin has said that he is taking a stand against raising the debt limit, you might think that he has always taken that position. That is not the case. 

Akin and his Missouri Republican colleagues Roy Blunt, Jo Ann Emerson, Sam Graves and Kenny Hulshof voted multiple times during the Bush Administration to raise the debt limit. Two readily available votes on record occurred in June 2002 and November 2004.

And if you don’t remember the major outcry from Republicans for spending cuts, that is because there wasn't really an outcry at all. In fact, the debt increased to $9.815 trillion dollars by the end of Bush’s presidency. 

h/t Think Progress 

Who could have guessed that Americans don't like the plan to privatize Medicare supported by Todd Akin, Roy Blunt, Vicky Hartzler, Jo Ann Emerson, Billy Long, Sam Graves and Blaine Luetkemeyer?  

According to the new CBS News poll, 31 percent of Americans support converting Medicare into a sort of voucher program. Fifty-eight percent said they support keeping the program’s existing structure intact.

[The House GOP plan supported by all of the Missouri Republicans in Washington] plan would eliminate the traditional single-payer Medicare system and replace it with vouchers that could be used in the private insurance market.

h/t Think Progress 

No one could have predicted that the House GOP's plan to phase out Medicare as we know it while giving the very wealthy even more tax cuts would be unpopular: "Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich distanced himself on Sunday from a House GOP plan to make cuts to Medicare, calling it 'too big a jump' for the American people."

From Meet the Press:

The DSCC is slamming Todd Akin today (release below the fold) for voting against a measure that would repeal tax credits for the five largest oil companies.  Sam Graves, Vicky Hartzler, Billy Long and Blaine Luetkemeyer also voted to protect the big oil tax breaks. 

ThinkProgress summarizes Thursday's vote:

Exxon Mobil is by far the most profitable company in the new Fortune 500 list, riding “high oil prices to a staggering $30 billion in income” in 2010. Exxon made over $10 billion more than fellow oil giant Chevron, the third most profitable company (AT&T edged out Chevron for the number two spot). ConocoPhillips’ $11.4 billion in profits put it in the 16th spot, giving the three oil giants a combined $60.9 billion in profits in 2010.

Today, the Republicans in the House of Representatives celebrated this massive redistribution of wealth from American families to oil executives. With the support of 7 oil-patch Democrats, 234 Republicans voted to block a bill to eliminate a $1.8 billion annual subsidy that treats oil drilling as “domestic manufacturing”...

As they did in March, House Republicans voted unanimously to defend these wasteful, unaffordable and unfair oil subsidies, even though several members told their constituents they want to end them.

The Americans United for Change organization has a new TV spot running in a few Congressional districts around the country highlighting Congressional Republicans' recent vote to phase out Medicare as we know it.  It's a good taste of what's to come.

Reps. Todd Akin, Vicky Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jo Ann Emerson, Sam Graves and Billy Long all voted to eliminate Medicare -- and give the very wealthy even more tax cuts.

A very early entry for Best Ad of the 2012 Cycle:

h/t The Plum Line

Marist has a new poll looking at attitudes toward deficit reduction strategies on the table in Washington, summed up quite well by The Hill: "Raise taxes on wealthy, leave Medicare, Medicaid alone."

[F]ully four in five registered voters oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid. The House GOP’s fiscal 2012 budget, largely crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), makes fundamental long-term changes to both health entitlement programs, converting Medicaid into a block grant and turning Medicare into a type of voucher system. 

Democrats (92 percent), Republicans (73 percent) and independents (75 percent) all opposed cuts to the two programs, the McClatchy-Marist poll found.

Here's a breakdown of responses about cutting Medicare and Medicaid, and to increasing taxes on income over $250,000, as posted by Slate's Dave Weigel.

The Post-Dispatch reminds Republicans in the General Assembly that the payday lending reforms proposed by Rep. Mary Still (D-Columbia) and others are patterned after federal legislation credited to Sen. Jim Talent that "limited the financial damage payday-loan companies can inflict on military families."

PAYDAY LOAN HYPOCRISY: MISSOURI GOP FORGETS EXAMPLE SET BY JIM TALENT

...The debate about payday loans shouldn’t be about politics; it should be about fairness and justice.

And that’s why we bring Mr. Talent into the debate. We could bring in former Gov. Matt Blunt, the Republican who sought to remove payday-loan facilities from nursing homes. Or U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, the uber-conservative congressman from Tarkio who sponsored a measure similar to Mr. Talent’s.

Todd Akin, Vicky Hartzler, Jo Ann Emerson, Blaine Luetkemeyer and Sam Graves voted Friday in favor of the GOP's Medicare Elimination Plan.  Included as part of the Paul Ryan budget, it passed today despite bipartisan opposition.

We look forward to hearing from all of the Congressmembers why they voted to

• dismantle Medicare and Medicaid while giving even more tax cuts to the already very wealthy
• double health-care costs for seniors
• increase taxes on the middle-class to finance tax cuts for the rich and
• endanger vital Medicaid services
• make huge education cuts
• undermine another important part of the social safety net

and a whole bunch of other terrible stuff. 

Did I mention that the already very wealthy will get tax cuts while Medicare gets phased out?

Less than a year after Sam Graves received some unwelcome attention in Roll Call, New York Post, Salon.com and local media for allegedly being part of "a group of House Republicans and lobbyists...who regularly party with female lobbyists," Graves' office has received the Gawker treatment for visual evidence of how they passed the time on Friday night as other people in Washington were working on a budget deal. 

"Five cases of crappy beer and a pizza, however—that's a Missouri party," Gawker's Max Read writes.

Missouri's entire GOP delegation in the U.S. House voted against a very simple amendment yesterday "that would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause."  The proposed amended was very simple:

Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate changes is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.

That was it.  Todd Akin, Jo Ann Emerson, Sam Graves, Vicky Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer and Billy Long all voted against it.   Reps. Cleaver, Clay and Carnahan all supported the presumably noncontroversial statement.

h/t Political Wire

It's a time-honored tradition among Republicans to praise the Constitution and insist on its strict interpretation, all while demonstrating a shocking degree of unfamiliarity –  if not outright disdain – for its actual content. [My personal favorite might still be House GOP Leader John Boehner confusing the Declaration of Independence with the Preamble to the Constitution, while he brandished his pocket copy of the latter.  What a perfect illustration of the fact that for the GOP the Constitution is, indeed, a mere accessory.]

Another unsettling example of the GOP’s hypocrisy vis-à-vis the Constitution is the "Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011," cosponsored by Missouri Congressmen Sam Graves and Todd Akin, to gut the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to everyone born in the United States.

The League of Conservation Voters released its annual environmental voting scorecard today.  Eighty-one House members received "zero" ratings for their votes against clean energy and commonsense pollution safeguards -- and four of those zeros came from Missouri.  

Here's how the LCV summarizes their methodology:

“While the lack of progress in 2010 is highly disappointing, we applaud those members of Congress who fought to protect public health and the environment and reduce our nation’s dangerous dependence on oil,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, LCV Senior Vice President of Government Affairs. “Conversely, the 2010 Scorecard clearly exposes those members who put corporate polluters and other special interests ahead of the health and well-being of all Americans by opposing efforts to transition our nation to a clean energy economy, enforce commonsense pollution safeguards, and protect the environment.”

Politico's Dave Catanese: "At least one GOP state lawmaker was taken by Rep. Sam Graves' brief flirtation with the Missouri Senate race...Jerry Nolte for Congress was formed on Feb. 2."