Martin Heinrich
Senate candidate Heather Wilson left more than a few important facts out of her recent attack in the Albuquerque Journal. Most importantly she failed to mention her 11-year track record in Congress.
Perhaps most outrageous is Wilson’s pretend indignity over government spending. During her time in office, former Congresswoman Heather Wilson was all for taking out loans to fight two wars and pay for an unfunded prescription drug program. At the same time, she voted for tax breaks for the richest Americans and a taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout.
Here are a few of the highlights from her tenure as your U.S. representative that she hopes you won’t remember:
- As one of her final acts as a congresswoman, Wilson voted for a bill that gave a historic bailout to the Wall Street CEO’s who crashed our economy. Her support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) allowed the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in troubled assets.
- Wilson voted to max out our nation’s credit card on costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office show that Republican-Bush policies on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and new defense policies cost $1.469 trillion.
- Wilson voted for the unfunded Bush tax cuts for the ultra-rich, adding over $700 billion to the deficit over the long term. We’ve seen that Wilson’s approach to taking care of special interests and ignoring the interests of New Mexico’s middle class families has proven ineffective at stimulating job growth.
- In 2003, Wilson voted for the Medicare Part D program that gave billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies and health care giants by not allowing Medicare to negotiate cheaper drugs for seniors. This unfunded prescription drug program costs U.S. taxpayers about $55 billion annually, paid for completely through deficit spending.
What’s more is the irony that, while Wilson focuses on earning the support of the tea party and playing an armchair political quarterback, she refuses to say whether she would vote for the House GOP’s budget that guts Medicare. Perhaps we’ve only scratched the surface on her extreme agenda.
In the months to come, we’ll surely have some tough choices to make, but going back to Heather Wilson’s devastating policies that put us in this mess in the first place isn’t one of them.
America is too great a nation to cast aside our values as we face hardship. I’ll continue working to reduce the deficit, but not on the backs of New Mexico seniors or the middle class. We must end the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, strengthen Medicare and Social Security, and accelerate our commitments to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The path forward is one that focuses on creating jobs and puts the American middle class family first.
Heinrich, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senate candidate and the U.S. representative for New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District.