Voice For Liberty

Tag: Todd Tiahrt

  • Todd Tiahrt on the Kansas Senate Primary

    At Friday’s meeting of the Wichita Pachyderm Club, United States Congressman for the fourth district of Kansas Todd Tiahrt was the speaker. Dion Lefler of the Wichita Eagle covered Tiaht’s speech in the news story Tiahrt offers thoughts on Obama, stimulus to Wichita Pachyderm Club. After the meeting I spoke to the congressman and asked a few questions.

    One topic that seems to be on the minds of many Republicans is the desire to avoid a prolonged primary battle for the United States Senate seat between Tiahrt and Kansas first district congressman Jerry Moran. I asked Tiahrt if it’s important to avoid this conflict.

    “Everybody that’s concerned about that ought to get on my team right away. That would be the most significant thing that would eliminate a primary.” Tiahrt added that people are looking for someone who gets the job done. He said that I’m the one who gets the job done, and that our senators come to my office, not Moran’s, when things need to get done in the House.

    I asked if he and Rep. Moran could come to some agreement to avoid a messy primary, perhaps expenditure limits. Tiahrt would not make a commitment to such an agreement unilaterally and said “I’m going to do what it takes to win.” Voters in Kansas have a right to know the records of both candidates, he said, and limiting resources might limit his ability to get out the message.

    Many local Republicans are expressing interest in replacing Tiahrt in Congress. So does he have a favorite? “We have a lot of quality candidates” was his diplomatic response.

  • Todd Tiahrt to Speak at Wichita Pachyderm Club

    On Friday February 6, 2009, United States Congressman for the fourth district of Kansas Todd Tiahrt will speak at a meeting of the Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    Rep. Tiahrt is a candidate for the United States Senate. His congressional district includes Wichita and most of south-central Kansas.

    The club meets at the Whiskey Creek Steakhouse in Old Town, at 230 N. Mosely. The meeting starts at noon, but it is suggested to arrive early.

  • Is Boeing tanker “victory” good for America?

    A Wall Street Journal editorial from March 18, 2008 (Patriot Tanker Games) argued that calls on Capitol Hill for “patriotism” in defense procurement are misguided. Leaders of this call include Kansas’s very own Todd Tiahrt and Pat Roberts.

    These politicians say that allowing an important American defense system to be built in partnership with a European firm is dangerous for America. In testimony to the defense appropriations subcommittee Rep. Tiahrt stated “I am outraged by this decision to outsource our national security … We are stacking the deck against American manufacturers, at the expense of our national and economic security.”

    But the Journal editorial sees clearly through the haze: “What’s really going on is a familiar scrum for federal cash, with politicians from Washington and Kansas using nationalism as cover for their pork-barreling … The modern aerospace biz is an increasingly global affair, and more than half of the Northrop/EADS tanker (by value) will be made in America. Much of Boeing’s tanker would also have been built outside the U.S.”

    If the tankers are built by Boeing that means more jobs for Wichita, which Tiahrt represents. Bringing home jobs and pork, it seems, are one of a United States Congressman’s most important jobs. But as the Journal editorial points out, the Defense Department has broader responsibilities: to American taxpayers across the country, and to American soldiers. If the Pentagon believes the Northrop/EADS tanker proposal is best for American security and taxpayers, on what basis can Todd Tiahrt, Pat Roberts and the rest of the Kansas congressional delegation object?

    Every congressman and senator wants to do for their district or state what Tiahrt and Roberts are doing for Wichita and Kansas. This desire leads to never-ending battles for a share of federal spending. Spending is often allocated based on political considerations instead of reason.

    The Journal editorial is absolutely correct when it concludes that “Protectionists in Congress want to make America’s soldiers wait even longer for this new equipment, all to score political points at home. There’s a word for that, but it’s not patriotism.”

  • Earmarks and pork thoroughly established

    In a letter printed in the February 22, 2008 Wichita Eagle, Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Tom Winters, along with Wichita State University President Don Beggs, praised some Kansas congressmen for being “very effective Washington advocates for south-central Kansas.” What the congressmen — Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, and Kansas Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts — did was to “roll up their sleeves and work on many issues that help improve our quality of life in the Wichita area.” Sounds like a noble cause, doesn’t it?

    What the three congressmen did was to secure federal funding for several projects deemed important to Chairman Winters and President Beggs. In other words, they brought home the pork to Wichita in the form of earmarks. This is why efforts to reform earmarks and pork barrel spending have failed and are likely to continue to fail. Evidence of this is Tom Winters, as I believe that he would describe himself as fiscally conservative, yet he praises his congressmen when they bring home the pork.

    Rep. Todd Tiahrt recently sent me a newsletter by email titled “It’s Time to End Wasteful Spending.” It told me of his goal “to find and create solutions that will benefit Kansas taxpayers.” He’s done just that, according to the letter from Winters and Beggs, and in the past too.

    In 2004 the Wichita Business Journal reported on two projects where Rep. Tiahrt brought home funding to his district. One was a computer-aided dispatch system for Sedgwick County’s 911 system. The other was a grant to the Wichita Art Museum. Neither recipient of the earmarks, the director of Sedgwick County’s Emergency Communications Department and the director of the Wichita Art Museum, thought the spending qualified as pork. Most pork recipients feel the same.

    Then there’s Tiahrt’s earmark for the BTK investigation. As reported in Human Events: “Tiahrt, according to ‘The Almanac of American Politics,’ has bragged that one of the ‘top 10 most gratifying things I’ve done’ is securing $1 million in an omnibus appropriations bill for the Wichita Police Department to investigate the ‘BTK’ killer.”

    That’s the way it usually is. The recipients of the earmarked pork barrel spending believe the need is urgent, the cause worthy, and a federal earmark is justified. It seems that everyone across the country believes this about their own pet projects.

    To Rep. Tiahrt’s credit, he has voted for earmark reform measures. But his behavior and that of our two senators, Roberts and Brownback, is to continue to bring home earmarks and pork for the good of the folks back home.

    And who can blame them, really? After all, we pay taxes to the federal government. Shouldn’t we get something back? Even Ron Paul gets earmarks for his congressional district. Should Rep. Tiahrt turn down earmarks, his political opponents would have his hide for failing to look out for the needs of his district.

    But with these attitudes, earmark reform will never succeed, and pork barrel politics will never end.

  • Rep. Todd Tiahrt and BTK

    Congressman Todd Tiahrt has secured $1 million for use by the Wichita Police Department in the omnibus appropriations bill that goes before the House of Representatives on Monday.

    The bill has already passed the Senate, Tiahrt spokesman Chuck Knapp said, and approval by the House is expected to be a formality.

    While there are safeguards in place to make sure the money is used for certain purposes, Knapp said, “we’re just not able to comment on the details of the funding.” — From “BTK ‘clues’ breed theories” in The Wichita Eagle, December 2, 2004.

    Here The Wichita Eagle reports that U.S. Representative Todd Tiahrt secured one million dollars from the federal government to help pay for costs related to the investigation of the BTK serial killer. Rep. Tiahrt was widely praised for this.

    We should remember where that money came from. It didn’t fall out of the sky. It wasn’t free. It came from the taxpayers of the entire country. I suspect that many people in Wichita thought it was good that we got the nation as a whole to pay for the BTK investigation.

    But think about what had to happen behind the scenes. Rep. Tiahrt must have lobbied for the money. Then the federal government collected tax money, only to send it back to Wichita. That, right there, is inefficient. A bureaucracy had to exist to perform that.

    Then, of course, Rep. Tiahrt and Wichita aren’t the only ones looking for a federal handout. When other cities or states receive money in this way — a special payment to one locality for a special project — we in Wichita call it pork barrel spending. That’s exactly what Rep. Tiahrt engaged in to get us the money for BTK. He should be ashamed, and we should not laud him for it.