The total for my portion of the trip was $4,028.93, which divided up among the 600,000+ residents the 29th District, equals approximately $0.00671 per constituent.
I understand the significance $0.00671 means to my district, but achieving energy independence is priceless to some. There are those who said that this trip was a vacation and we should have spent our time in Iowa. When Iowa finds the solution to energy independence, I will be the first to schedule a CODEL there.
It is unfortunate that some media outlets and individuals would skew this trip to only be about dollars and cents. But the truth is that this trip was desperately needed by lawmakers of Congress to find a solution to the energy crisis and I encourage more of my colleagues in Congress to visit Brazil.
Kuhl seems to be attacking the messenger, WHAM, which is an organization that's just doing its job. When you don't disclose information when you promise to do so, it makes good reporters curious, so they follow up. WHAM spent an inordinate amount of time and effort to find out something that could have been disclosed on time and without any static. Their reward for going through weeks of run-around is a partial disclosure and a bunch of attitude. They're the ones who should be snarky, but of course they've stayed professional.
The raw footage of Randy Kuhl's interview with Rochester's WHAM-13 has been posted (and embedded below).
Highlights:
In the accompanying blog entry, Reporter Evan Dawson talks about the importance of government transparency. Amen, brother.
Rochester's WHAM (Channel 13) has a story about Kuhl's Brazil trip that highlights the run-around they've been getting from the different committees and offices that are supposed to be releasing information about the trip. The story illustrates all the tricks of non-disclosure disclosure. These include unclear responsibility, releasing documents in Washington DC on paper instead of via email or over the Internet, and refusal of the main actors to acknowledge a problem.
WHAM should feel good about the hard work they're doing to track down this story. Even better, they let bloggers embed their stories, which I've done after the break:Their plan also enables illegal aliens to fraudulently enroll in Medicaid and SCHIP by weakening the proof of citizenship. Also, their bill is the most regressive tax increase in American history and taxes the poor to benefit the rich. SCHIP was also designed for children, but the Democratic extension increases the number of adults on SCHIP, which allows even more resources to be taken away from low-income kids. And finally and most importantly, SCHIP was designed for low-income, poor children. The majority forgot that when they designed their extension, because there are still poor children not covered. We must ensure that we cover the low-income children first before considering expanding the program.I've debunked some of these claims earlier (see this post on the immigrant issue). The "tax the poor" spin is an argument that poor people will bear the brunt of the tax increase on tobacco that partially funds S-CHIP expansion. The adult issue is a legitimate question, but the states that received waivers for adults were already covering all the kids allowed to be covered by S-CHIP, so the spin that adult funding is shorting kids is wrong. Also, part of the reason that poor children are not covered is that states are allowed to set coverage levels, and some fund S-CHIP at lower levels.
This trip was enlightening and desperately needed. And for those people that want to belittle it for political gain, do not understand that as a country you can not hide your head in the sand and think that everything will be fine. This is a global economy and we must learn from one another to benefit from the successes and failures that we have experienced.The obvious rejoinder to this is that there's no desperate need for anyone to stay at five-star hotels and fly on first-class military charters to learn about Brazil.