GOP Senator Blasts the 109th Congress

Boston (Globe).com :

Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire yesterday used his last major
floor speech as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to blast his own
party's leadership in Congress, accusing Republican leaders of engaging
in the type of fiscal recklessness that he said led voters to oust the
GOP from power.

Gregg, who will give up the Budget Committee gavel when his party
relinquishes control of Congress in January, issued his unusually harsh
critique in reference to a sweeping tax-cut bill that Republicans were
rushing through in the final hours of the congressional session.

"The American people took the reins of government away from the
Republican Party relative to the Republican Congress in this last
election," Gregg said in a speech on the Senate floor. "They did so, I
think, in large part because they were tired of our hypocrisy as a party
on the issue of fiscal responsibility. And it would appear that their
concerns are justified. It is true, I guess."

Gregg went on to say that Democrats will also probably be
irresponsible stewards of the nation's finances, "but at least they
won't be hypocritical about it."

"You just have to ask yourself how we, as a party, got to this
point, where we have a leadership which is going to ram down the throats
of our party the biggest budget-buster in the history of the Congress
under Republican leadership. Well, anyway, the American people figured
it out, and I'm sorry we haven't figured it out yet." Read on…

How refreshing to hear a Republican elected official push away the
Kool-aid. He also disparaged the Medicare bill that will limit choices
for seniors, a planned extension on mine clean up, and encouraged the
Bush Administration to follow the ISG's recommendations and stop funding
the war in Iraq with emergency funding.