The PA-08 Field Takes Shape For 2010

This story from the Bucks County Courier Times tells us the following about Judith Algeo, the chairwoman of the Warwick (Bucks County, PA) supervisors who launched her campaign for the 8th District seat in Congress recently…

When (Algeo) looks at her 15-month-old grandson, she sees “a little boy left with a legacy of debt” because of politicians in Washington, D.C.

“Our government added more than $1 trillion to the national debt this year,” she said. “So many zeroes I can’t understand it. + but the legacy to our children should be that they are debt free.”

Yes, it should. However, as noted here (from March 2006)…

…the Republican-led Congress has now approved spending over $425 billion on the Iraq War. Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard University adjunct lecturer Linda Bilmes conservatively project that the Iraq War will ultimately cost American taxpayers $2 trillion.

And yet…..glutinous spending-spree lessons still unlearned….the Republican-led Senate yesterday approved a $2.8 trillion election-year budget that broke the new spending limits only hours after it increased the federal debt-limit to avert a government default.

…

It seems odd that Republicans deride Democrats as the party of big-spending devotees of big-government…..when government has never been bigger or more in debt than under President George W. Bush and the Republican-dominated Congress. Odd and wholly inaccurate.

And while it’s true that Obama and the Dems have indeed added to the debt, it was necessary to revive our economy that was very nearly ruined utterly by Bushco (noted here).

Algeo, by the way, joins an ever-more-crowded field of Repugs vying for the right to run against Patrick Murphy (pictured) for the U.S. House PA-08 seat. Other contestants include Rob Mitchell (the story of his entry is here), who, as noted here, joined that little “press conference” in Washington organized by Moon Unit Bachmann (about which CREW is investigating, noted here).

Another in the running is software designer Jeff Schott, who, as noted here, complained about the offshoring of our jobs (near the bottom of the page…he’s right that that has been a huge problem, but as noted by the AFL-CIO here from 2005)…

Activists are demanding Congress review trade and tax policies that encourage white-collar offshore outsourcing. Without government intervention, warns (CIO Department for Professional Employees President Paul) Almeida, “short-sighted corporate policy focused on saving a few bucks in the short run will have an enormous deleterious impact on the entire U.S. economy.”

Can you say “chickens coming home to roost”…or possibly, elephants? And speaking of jobs, it should be noted that Murphy played a significant role here.

The last person in the Repug field vying to run against Murphy is former Marine reservist Dean Malik, who, to his credit, has not yet said or done anything dumb as nearly as I can tell, though the campaign is still young.