“Spending spigots” prevent social dehydration

Speaking with a forked tongue coming up to Election Day is not strictly a partisan affliction and, unfortunately, not rare for some office-seekers. It is too often a time for bumper-sticker messages instead of substantive and thoughtful ones. In the pre-campaign period, however, we deserve sensible, accurate, informative words. There are partisan policy differences, but they can be argued without shunning logic, reason and relevance in firing up your base.

So, when I saw the Sept. 9 headline in The Gazette, “Hinson targets ‘spending spigot…”, I thought it must be about a speech to a plumbing convention dealing with a bad invention. It turned out I was wrong. Rep. Ashley Hinson didn’t like the Democratic “spending spigot.” She would like to cut off the flow as she is “standing up for taxpayers, standing up for rural America, standing for safety and security.” Her own intellectual spigot is running dry into an empty bucket.

“Standing up for Iowa, rural America and taxpayers,” as if that was unique and set her apart from the rest of us is ridiculous. That spigot she abhors brought more than a drip to those she adores. In a recent year, farmers received $46 billion in federal benefits and that ain’t hay. It is taxpayers’ money well spent. It flows from the maligned Democratic spigot. Of course, there is some waste and I, as a taxpayer, wish there weren’t. Some folks are getting too much, but, like voting fraud, it is not widespread. Should the programs be stopped? Of course not. Without the spending spigot, without those dollars to rural Iowa, and taxes from it, school buses would run out of gas, preachers could deliver sermons to near-empty pews, and the small towns Hinson loves would wither.

Hinson “bemoaned” the infrastructure bill which was passed in the House without a single Republican vote. Fortunately, 19 Republicans in the Senate, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, grasped the spigot handle. Sen. Mitch McConnell, voting for it, said, “I was proud to support today’s historic bipartisan infrastructure deal and prove that both sides of the political aisle can still come together around common sense solutions.”

Iowa has much at stake. Every year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides over $40 billion for lifesaving research in medical schools, including ours at the University of Iowa. We received $148.3 million in the past year. Ask your doctor if stopping the flow or leaving just a trickle, is a prescription for a healthier Iowa and rural America. If the Congresswoman could turn off the spigot as she yearns to do, research that saves lives will die.

In a bizarre appeal to her audience, she deplored spending any of the $700 million of federal coronavirus dollars at prisons where some convicted, despicable people get the same medical treatment that other prisoners get. She cites a killer and a sexual abuser of young women as people who should apparently be denied available care. That could be the ultimate state-sponsored death penalty without judicial review.

Hinson is giving superficial a bad name. When nonsense flows from a political spigot, it is time to turn it off. Hinson takes absurdity to a new height and nonsense to a new low. And it is not yet bumper sticker time.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”