Cornyn’s Record - Indefensible

intend to vote out John Cornyn in November and have written a number of pieces on my blog about why I do not support John Cornyn for re-election. I want to outline a few of them here because
his voting record is fair game and it is important to understand exactly where he has been over the past 6 years.

This is what his record is:

1. He voted in favor of letting a 10.6% reduction in medicare physicians payments occur last week, in order to protect the health care insurance industry from unfavorable legislation. In Texas, specifically physicians, as a result of Cornyn’s dutiful allegiance to bush on this bill, will lose $860 million dollars for the care of elderly and disabled patients over the period of 12/08 to 07/09. This is on top of a decade of cuts and on top of Texas being one of the sates with the lowest physician-to-population ratios (less than 204 per 100k).
   AMA Outraged at Senators for Reducing Medicare Payments

   The Medicare Vote
   
   

2. He attached the divisive abortion politics to an otherwise broadly supported bill to expand Children’s Health Insurance Program by adding an unborn child regulation - even though that same child’s
   mother could potentially not be covered by his amendment.
   The CHIP Vote
   
3. He has voted THREE times to strike down sensible Stem Cell research, even though each time he voted against the bill in the senate he was always one of less than 37 who did so.  Even Kay Bailey Hutchinson voted for this Stem Cell research bill and Cornyn objected (and did so as well to uphold Bush’s veto). The Stem Cell Vote

   This is even though the bill had very strong ethical components: As quoted from the bill, “Amends the Public Health Service act to establish the following ethical requirements for research: (1) the stem cells have to be derived from human embryos that have been donated to in-vitro fertilization clinics for the purpose of fertility treatments and are deemed in excess of the clinical need for individual treatment, (2) it must be determined that the embryos would never be implanted in a woman, and therefore would be discarded, and (3) the individual who donated the embryos did so without receiving any financial or other inducement to make the donation (Sec. 2)”

5. He has voted against sensible firearm trace data by not voting to strip out the Tiahrt (which explicitly prohibits the gov’t from requiring businesses to inventory their firearms and locked down firearm trace data from local police and communities - The Tiahrt was largely seen as anti-police and pro-gun lobby. I don’t have to tell you why that is because that was by design not happenstance.
6. Even John McCain has said about the Tiahrt, “This information is not top secret data that jeopardizes our national security, or hinders law enforcement.” “We cannot have a government that operates in secret and refuses to release information that shows where criminals have obtained a gun. This language is an embarrassment to law-abiding gun owners and is a slap in the face to law enforcement.”
   
   Mayors Against Tiahrt Site

   But Cornyn supported the Tiahrt to restrict this information anyhow (by the way he also attached abortion issues into his gun bills for good measure) and he has even voted against mandating child safety locks on guns (The Child Safety Lock Vote ) (Hutchinson was in favor of that ).

   I can go on and I will if you like but if you look at his record what it amounts to is a blatant pro-business , abortion politics driven, Bush backing record.

He has the worst ratings by outside 3rd party interest groups in Education, Women’s Issues, Labor, Environment, Drug, Energy, Animal Welfare, Civil Liberties and Rights, but he scores high with guess what? Business!! Don’t take my word check for yourself,

Interest Group Ratings of Cornyn’s record

Anyways, I hope that you could see that his record and realize that it’s time to take Cornyn out of office and elect Rick Noriega! Someone who actually knows something about how to use guns for what they are meant for - to protect our nation.