McCollum's Worn-out Suit

If ever there were a worn-out political suit, certainly it hangs in the closet of incumbent Republican Congressman Bill McCollum! Bill McCollum... self-styled champion of term limits, who is preparing to run for his 10th term in Congress, and apparently has no intention of ever going away.

Bill McCollum, who voted against raising the minimum wage in 1996 (against the wishes of 80% of the American people) and then, in 1997, voted to raise his own Congressional salary for the 11th time in 17 years. Bill McCollum, who compounded this latest effrontery against the working people of America by claiming that if Congressional salaries did not go up the job would "not attract any top-notch people." I tell you what, Bill. You get all the "top-notch" people who make over $136,000 to vote for you, and I'll take the votes of all the "top-notch" people who make $30,000 and less, and we'll see who gets to go to Congress in November of this year.

And, of course, there's Bill McCollum, vice-chairman of the Banking Committee, who takes in, every election cycle, over half-a-million dollars from the banking industry for his re-election campaigns. Millions of dollars from banks all over this country go to a guy who sits on a committee whose sole purpose for existence is to regulate and oversee the very industry that pays his way back into Congress every term. Conflict of interest? Hmmm.

(To see where Bill McCollum's 1997 PAC money came from, click here. Note the high number of out-of-state banks and bank-related groups. For a more extensive FEC database of McCollum's contributors i.e., PACs, individuals, by state, by date, by election cycle, etc. click here.)

He has introduced a bill--The Responsible Borrower Protection Act of 1997 -- that would, according to a reader's letter in the Orlando Sentinel, "change the nation's bankruptcy laws in a way that would hurt consumers and favor the credit-card industry." How surprising! And when John Koeing, the business writer for the Sentinel asked Bill whether Congress should not also take steps to rein in the credit industry, his completely shameless reply was, "How does government do that efficiently? The answer is... it doesn't." The reason, folks, it doesn't, is because of bought-and-paid-for congressmen like Bill McCollum. Put me in the House of Representatives and I'll show Bill how the government can rein in the special interests efficiently!

And now, there's Bill McCollum, the man who has introduced to Congress House Resolution 372, a resolution that would put Congress on record as opposing any state initiative authorizing the use of medical marijuana. This is a complete reversal of his stance in 1981, when he still retained an iota of decency and idealism and co-sponsored legislation that would have allowed the use of this age-old pharmaceutical. Of all the hypocritical, self-serving, dunderheaded things Bill has done in his long and inglorious political career, this has to be the one thing that approaches pure evil. What would possess someone to take away from people suffering from AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, epilepsy, and other ailments a proven and effective treatment for their pain and suffering? I wish that Bill would answer that question for the sake of the sick and the dying.

And finally, there's Bill McCollum, arm-chair drug warrior, who promises a new and frightening chapter in America's long and disastrous war on drugs, in the form of massive new military adventures in South American countries which, if implemented, promise to deliver to us a foreign policy quagmire unseen since the days of Vietnam.