Irony: Louisiana Pro-Abort Rep Cedric Richmond (D-La): GOP ‘Sinful’ To Tie Disaster Aid To Spending Cuts

It's simply breathtaking to see the most anti-God, sin-promoting of the ruling class using the very religious tenants on whose necks lie their own boots to try and whack conservatives over the head with.  From The Huffington Post viamemeorandum: Louisiana Congressman: GOP ‘Sinful’ To Tie Disaster Aid To Spending Cuts

As East Coasters brace for what some say will be a historic pummel by Hurricane Irene, at least one lawmaker is fuming over a requirement by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that any potential emergency disaster aid be offset by spending cuts.

"It is sinful to require us to cut somewhere ... in order to provide emergency disaster assistance for American citizens," Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) told The Huffington Post on Friday.

The Louisiana Democrat pointed out that this weekend is the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated his district and cost the federal government more than $100 billion. That recovery effort would have been delayed "by years" if Congress had required the same kind of spending cuts to offset aid, he said.

Yeah - that's sinful, but tearing babies limb from limb while conscious, and using taxpayer money to do it, is AOK with him. But this brings up a bigger question, and one that I wrote about briefly 2 years ago: Lessons from history: “Where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?” That question was from all the way back in the 1820s. Almost 200 years ago. From Daily Inter Lake via Instapundit: Charity and the good ol' Constitution.

It was a question that Rep. Crockett was not well-prepared to answer, but his constituent wanted to know why he had voted to spend federal funds for the relief of families that had been left homeless as the result of a ravaging fire in Georgetown. Crockett had actually seen the fire and gone to help rescue women and children and to fight the flames, so he was more than happy a bill came before Congress to aid those victims further. As he himself said, "We put aside all other business, and rushed it through as soon as it could be done."

Again, sort of reminiscent of the "rush" to pass health-care 'reform" in the current Congress, but whereas we are talking about spending a trillion dollars or more for health-care reform, the fire relief was the relatively paltry sum of $20,000.
That's because this was back in the 1820s, and Rep. Crockett was none other than the American folk hero, Davy Crockett, "king of the wild frontier." Crockett served three terms in Congress altogether before being killed defending the Alamo in Texas.

But back to our story, which comes from an 1884 biography, "The Life of Colonel David Crockett" by Edward S. Ellis, it is instructive to note the puzzlement of Rep. Crockett when he was challenged by his constituent Horatio Bunce while out stumping for votes. Bunce told Crockett in no uncertain terms that he could not vote for him again.

"You gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me," Bunce said in the story, as allegedly recounted by Crockett.

By today's mainstream-media standards, Bunce would clearly be known as a right-wing extremist, and if he expressed his concerns at a town-hall meeting this summer he would have been labeled "un-American."

Even Crockett, before finding out what was on Bunce's mind, said, "I had been making up my mind that he was one of those churlish fellows who care for nobody but themselves, and take bluntness for independence."

But that was before the Tennessee farmer had asked his devastating question, which Crockett described colorfully as a 'sockdologer!" which roughly translated means a comment that could set a person to thinking.

And think, Crockett did, trying in vain to find some justification for his vote in favor of the $20,000 in charity.

"When I began to think about it, I could not remember a thing in the Constitution that authorized it. I found I must take another tack, so I said: 'Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.'"

But Horatio Bunce, a one-man "Tea Party" of his day, was having none of it. Rather than be hornswoggled by Crockett's attempt to deflect the argument away from the Constitution, he circled right back to it:

"In the first place," he said, the Government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man... [W]hile you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive, what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose."

There's a lot more at the link. It's long but well worth the read. Click over and read through the whole thing.