Peter Roskam - Penny-Wise, Pound Foolish

On October 31st, 2007, Halloween, Peter Roskam introduced H.R. 4036, the Cents and Sensibilty Act of 2007, which his website triumphantly proclaims will change the material of the penny to save taxpayers more than $1 billion over 10 years.

Yes, you heard it right. That’s $1,000,000,000! In just 10 years!

This astounding feat will be accomplished by by changing the metallic composition of the penny from a copper-coated zinc alloy to copper-coated steel which will reduce the the cost of manufacturing a single penny from 1.7 cents to only 7/10 of a cent. In his announcement of this windfall, Peter stated that “it is simply unacceptable for Congress to sit on its hands while taxpayer dollars are thrown out the window,” and he vowed to “fight Congress’s wasteful spending at every turn”. The bill further provides for the collection of aluminum cans for recycling, members being able to drop them off in the Republican cloakroom.

My amazement at this announcement exists at several levels:

First, I would never have taken Peter for a Jane Austen fan but the mental picture I have of him sitting by his fireplace in Wheaton, in his slippers, sipping a cup of tea and reading about Elinor and Marianne and Mr. Willoughby is rather heartwarming.

Second, I’m amazed at my good fortune for Peter to have given me the gift of introducing a bill that could lead to such a wonderful headline as I have written for this entry. It will look nice on Google. Thanks, Peter!

Mostly, I’m amazed that Peter has the nerve to crow about fighting Congress’ wasteful spending and I’m amazed at his legislative priorities.

You want to save me money Peter? How about stopping the stupid, bloody war in Iraq. It costs us $200,000,000 every fucking day and we’ve told you we want it stopped. It will likely have cost us a over a trillion dollars by the time it is finished, if it is ever finished. That’s $1,000,000,000,000. It would take your penny-saving project more than 10,000 years to pay for it. And we’re tired of spending that money to occcupy someone else’s country and kill their women and children because it is wrong. It is wrong, and you are wrong to continue to fund it.

And what about all the money that’s being poured into the hands of contractors in Iraq with no oversight and no accountability? Where’s your legislation to stop that? It seems we read about this stuff in the paper every day. Just last month we read that the government does not know what it received from a billion dollar contract with DynCorp. That’s going to take 10 years for your program to pay for and that’s just a drop in the corruption bucket.

And what about your vote on H.R. 6 which would have required big oil companies to pay us the royalties we are entitled to when they take oil from the Gulf of Mexico? You voted against it, Peter.

And what about Medicare, Peter? You voted against allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices for prescription drugs. You voted to protect drug companies at the expense of seniors and at the expense of taxpayers.

I could go on and on but I have work to do.

The bottom line is that Peter Roskam has zero credibility when he says he’s fighting wasteful spending.