The crazy season is upon us. Now that Fargo municipal elections are over, get ready for daily doses of nonsense from candidates running for state and federal offices.
Case in point: The absurd attempt to blame Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., for defeat in Congress of farm disaster money for northern Plains farmers, including North Dakota and Minnesota operators.
Last week a House/Senate conference committee pulled the ag disaster provision from a larger emergency appropriations bill for hurricane relief and the Iraq war. Left intact was aid for Gulf Coast farmers who were hit by hurricanes. Left out were North Dakota and Minnesota farmers who have been trying to deal with crop losses from drought, floods and disease.
The reaction from Pomeroy’s Republican opponent, Matt Mechtel of Page, N.D., was about as partisan and uninformed as it could have been.
Don’t misunderstand. Mechtel is a competent candidate who certainly will have a lot of sensible things to say. But if his criticism of Pomeroy on the disaster aid bill is an indication of the substance (or lack thereof) of his rhetoric, Mechtel won’t be taken seriously when he makes sense.
Mechtel’s shots should have been directed at Republican members of the conference committee. They voted in a bloc to scuttle help for area farmers. They got their marching orders from the Bush administration. The president said he would veto the bill if it included money for farmers outside of the hurricane zones. The record shows quite clearly that the Republican majority on the committee, not Pomeroy and not the Democratic members, ignored the real needs of North Dakota farmers.
There are a couple of different ways that the Forum is wrong on this one.
For one thing, Mechtel is a Republican. Pomeroy is not. Mechtel, if in office, would have more sway with the majority House Republicans on issues like this than Pomeroy would.
For another, I'm glad the Republicans shot down this money. If Pomeroy and other ag-state congressman want disaster money for farmers let them introduce a bill calling for it so that it can be approved or denied based on its merits. Sneaking it into a "must pass" piece of legislation is just plain underhanded. Keep in mind that the Fargo Forum's editorial board was highly critical of Republican efforts to attach ANWR drilling legislation to unrelated bills in Congress.
I guess the Forum has different standards for Democrats.
In a time when some in Washington are finally starting to slow earmarks this sort of spending just isn't going to fly. Or it shouldn't, anyway. We need more scrutiny on federal spending. That doesn't happen when you sneak spending into unrelated bills.
See Taking Back ND for more.