LITTLE ROCK — Rookie U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton of the 4th District of Arkansas voted last week not to fortify the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s federal flood-insurance program before it runs out of money to pay claims from Hurricane Sandy.
An ultra-conservative group called Club for Growth had issued a statement on the issue. It had pronounced that flood insurance ought to be privatized, an assertion Cotton repeated.
That is a substantive point worthy of serious debate. But this may not be the most responsible and sensitive way to advance privatization-imperiling payment of legitimate claims, that is, to premium-paying property owners beset by the very natural disaster for which they had appropriately insured themselves through the only program available to them.
And Cotton’s vote may not represent the best service to his South Arkansas constituents.
The 4th District falls on the lower income side and sometimes get visited by destructive bad weather. It’s conceivable that Cotton would want or need federal aid for his district sometime.
As Sam Rayburn once said, sometimes you have to go along to get along.
So it would seem that Cotton cast his first big vote in service to national conservative groups and their antigovernment theology rather than to his constituents.
That’s what can happen when Democrats give the people no decent choice to succeed their retiring Democratic congressman, Mike Ross.
It is what can happen when Republicans pour out-of-state largesse on a Harvard-educated lawyer and Army veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq with whom national conservatives are smitten.
Cotton, owing to his resume and a widely praised open letter he wrote to the New York Times, was backed nationally both by extreme economic conservatives and military neo-conservatives.
He was elected in the 4th District by a kind of vacant acclamation based not on strong acquaintance, but on Democratic abdication and his abundant television ads mindlessly opposing Obamacare. He was elected on support as broad as shallow.
All of that is to say that South Arkansas was a government-needy place ripe for exploitation by monied national groups not believing in government.
Cotton’s anti-Sandy vote actually was his second act in subservience to the national causes he represents. Before that, he’d written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying that Chuck Hagel wasn’t warrior enough to be defense secretary.
Cotton’s professed guiding principle on the disaster vote is that the federal government is broke and must stop spending new money without offsetting this additional money with cuts elsewhere.
He’s right. But you must pick your fights. Spurning the dire human needs of people in New York and New Jersey was not the right fight to pick.
The U.S. Senate had previously voted out a $64 billion Sandy relief bill that was larded with excess. U.S. Sen. John Boozman had voted against it on account of the untimely expansiveness of its spending authority.
House Speaker John Boehner had tabled the measure. Then New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had blown a gasket in protest.
So with his new House in place, Boehner broke off the essentially needed piece-$9.7 billion to shore up the insurance fund-and brought it up for a vote.
It passed overwhelmingly, as it should have.
But Cotton joined about 60 other right-flank GOP zealots in casting pointless “no” votes.
Even Tim Griffin voted for it. Even Tim Griffin.
To get to the impractical right of Tim Griffin is to wind up in the lap of someone like Ron Paul.
Let’s reach here for the handy comparison to the household budget.
Perhaps you are spending beyond your personal means. Perhaps you are in the process of analyzing the household budget to find where you can make essential cuts.
Then, perhaps, your roof blows off.
What do you do? Do you get the roof fixed? Or do you save money by living without shelter?
Do you address your household budget problem by studying budget calculations on documents wet from rain or blowing in the wind?
Of course, you ante up your deductible and get a new roof and find some other way to get your accounts in balance.
Ideology is valuable, indeed vital. It should be applied vigorously toward sound solutions.
But it fails when it is allowed to prevail over practicality.
Cotton wasted no time in finding a way for his ideology to be misapplied, and to fail.
Let’s hope the weather is good in the 4th District.
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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.
Editorial, Pages 13 on 01/08/2013