AMAC Exclusive By: Shane Harris
While August is typically the month where legislators look forward to escaping the DC heat and heading home on their “August Recess,” given the cascade of disasters occurring under Democrat leadership, this year’s recess may be no vacation for Congressional Democrats. Indeed, Democrats in Congress are almost certainly dreading returning to their districts to face their enraged constituents. Much like the angry reactions seen at Democrat townhalls across the nation in 2009 following the passage of Obamacare, this summer’s recess is likely to bring them an earful.
Here are six big questions Democrats are praying they can squirm out of answering at their next townhall.
1. Why isn’t Congress doing more to mitigate the disaster in Afghanistan and hold the Biden administration accountable for their failures?
After the absolute catastrophe that has unfolded in Afghanistan over the few weeks, even the liberal media have asked Biden administration officials some tough questions. It’s difficult to see images of people cramming themselves into wheel wells of aircraft or desperately throwing small children over razor wire into the arms of U.S. service members and not feel outraged at President Biden for overseeing such a calamity and doing little to alleviate it.
But Congressional Democrats have done their best anyway to provide cover for Biden and his team, with Nancy Pelosi saying that the President “is to be commended for his clarity of purpose.” If his purpose was to allow the complete disintegration of everything the United States has attempted to achieve in Afghanistan for the last twenty years, then bravo.
While some Democrats have been more direct than others in their criticism of Biden, the vast majority have either stayed silent or offered tacit excuses for the administration’s response. But Americans are angry, and they’re going to expect real answers from their Congressional leaders in the coming weeks.
2. Why are Democrats hell-bent on spending $4.7 trillion when runaway inflation is already hampering economic recovery?
According to a recent Fox News poll, 86% of Americans say they are concerned about inflation and rising costs. Since January of 2020, used car prices have soared 29%. Lumber prices have tripled since last year, causing the cost of an average house to increase by $36,000. Even if someone can purchase a home, furniture costs are also up 30%. The cost of basic foodstuffs like corn and soybeans are at their highest levels in nearly a decade. The list goes on.
Despite those alarming trends, Democrats appear wholly unconcerned with inflation, and instead want to flood the economy with a total of $4.7 trillion in spending. Never mind the fact that even the supposedly “bipartisan” $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, is massive by any historical standard. That plan was supposed to be entirely paid for by offsetting other costs, yet it is now estimated to add $256 billion to the national debt. But don’t worry, Democrats are claiming that “a little bit of inflation” is a “good thing.” Also, while most Americans’ paychecks are worth less and less, Nancy Pelosi still wants to increase the pay for Congressional staffers who write such monstrous spending bills in the first place.
While wild spending sprees may be a good way for Democrats to please their favored political groups and claim “big, bold action,” most Americans won’t be thrilled—and Dems are sure to hear about it when they return to their districts.
3. Why are Democrats ignoring the ongoing crisis at the southern border?
When Democrats came into power in January, the first crisis they faced – and one entirely of their own making – was an unprecedented surge of migrants at the southern border. After Biden and Congressional Democrats promised to undo many of President Trump’s border security measures, more than a million people have flooded the border, overwhelming U.S. Border Patrol and local law enforcement.
Initially, as communities and states cried out for assistance from the federal government to stem the flow of illegal crossings, Democrats received some pushback from the media, especially as COVID concerns continued to plague border towns. However, coverage of the border crisis has since waned, even as crossings remain near record highs. July was the single busiest month for border crossings in more than two decades. Tens of thousands of illegal migrants are being released into the interior of the United States each month.
Absent pressure from the media or liberal elites, Congressional Democrats may feel safe to continue ignoring Biden’s border crisis as long as they are within the confines of their DC offices. But ordinary Americans are seeing the disastrous effects of the migrant surge first-hand, even in places far from the border like Chattanooga, Tennessee, where flights full of unaccompanied migrant children have arrived in the middle of the night with no warning or explanation from the federal government. Given the reality on the ground for many Americans, Democrats will not be able to ignore the border situation when they go home.
4. Why are Democrats doing nothing to stop the crime wave?
Many Democrats represent urban areas, which have been the hardest hit by rising crime rates. Shootings and violent crime numbers have reached near all-time highs in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and New York in the wake of Democrat calls to “defund the police” and “reimagine policing” last year.
In light of the chaos, some progressive mayors and city councils who are forced to live every day in the cities they run have now begun to reverse course and run as law-and-order candidates, recognizing that their anti-police message is leading the party, and the country, toward full-fledged anarchy.
But Democrats in Congress, safe in their DC high-rise apartments with armed bodyguards to protect them, apparently haven’t gotten that message. “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib said policing is “inherently and intentionally racist” and that having a police force is “government funded murder.” Just last week, Congresswoman Cori Bush said that she is “not going to shy away from ‘defund the police,’” even as she spent tens of thousands of dollars on her own private security. That kind of hypocrisy doesn’t sit well with American voters. Yet Democrats have no answer to the crime wave beyond resurrecting their calls for “gun control.”
5. Why are Democrats continuing to wage war on American energy, even as gas prices skyrocket?
On Joe Biden’s first day in office, he revoked a key permit that effectively ended construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline in an open attempt to appease progressive Democrats in Congress. The project would have created thousands of jobs in largely blue-collar communities and would have further solidified the American energy independence achieved under President Trump.
Instead, the country is once again reliant on foreign oil as Biden drastically cut domestic production. Worse still, Biden waived sanctions on a Russian pipeline just weeks after cancelling the Keystone project. Apparently, Russian jobs are more important than American jobs to President Biden. And now, Biden has even had to beg OPEC to increase their production, as gas prices have reached their highest point in nearly a decade.
Congressional Democrats failed to stand up for their constituents and instead doubled down on Biden’s disastrous energy policies. As AMAC Newsline has reported, the Democrat “infrastructure” package contains things like a mileage tax “pilot program” and huge subsidies for electric vehicles and renewable energy, but no discernable provisions to actually help the vast majority of Americans who still use gasoline vehicles and rely on traditional sources of energy to heat and power their homes.
In short, Democrats’ energy policies are a full-fledged sellout to left-wing environmental groups—and their constituents are paying the price at the pump. With rising costs and other economic pressures like runaway inflation, don’t expect many people to be pleased with the Democrats’ obsession with implementing the Green New Deal.
6. Why is nobody talking about Hunter Biden?
It was bad enough when Big Tech purposely censored a New York Post story about Hunter and Joe Biden’s corruption in the lead-up to last year’s presidential election. But now the media won’t even cover Hunter Biden’s many humiliating escapades that are emerging after Joe Biden took office, despite the fact that some of them implicate the President.
Most recently, in another round of bombshell revelations, videos have surfaced of Hunter Biden telling a prostitute in a Vegas hotel room that Russian drug dealers stole another one of his laptops. (For those of you keeping score at home, that’s three laptops that Hunter has lost track of – so far.)
There’s Hunter’s burgeoning career as an artist. Despite the fact that most critics agree his art isn’t any good, he reportedly may sell his works for as much as $500,000 a pop. That shameless grifting has even many Democrats pointing out that buyers – many of whom are likely foreign entities – must be paying so much only to curry favor with the Biden family.
Despite all this unprecedented corruption, President Biden has faced almost no direct media scrutiny in the very few instances he has taken questions from reporters. While President Trump’s family was the subject of nearly constant investigations and scrutiny throughout his four years in office, Hunter and Joe are apparently immune because they are Democrats.
Yet with the evidence of the Biden’s’ almost laughable corruption piling up, Democrat members of Congress may find that Americans back home don’t think it’s so funny.
In short, when Congressional Democrats head out of town for a few weeks, they may not be in for much “vacation.” Instead, they are in for a rare, and uncomfortable, encounter with reality. Over the next few weeks, expect to see videos of the townhalls Democrats are already dreading.