Sessions questions: Reviewing a record of deficit spending, corporate bailouts and ethics issues

November 5, 11:37 AMDallas County Republican ExaminerDavid Smith

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U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions has questions to answer on deficts, debt and political favors for PAC contributions (US House photo)

I seem to have a few more page hits the last couple of days, so it seems to be the perfect time to go over some of the reasons I am running for Texas' 32nd Congressional District seat in the U.S. House.  Chief among these, the current Representative's record of deficit spending, corporate bailouts and exchanging political favors for contributions to his Political Action Committee.  PETE PAC is an acronym that stands for People for Enterprise, Trade and Economic growth, and is tied to U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX-32).

It is a well-known fact that Rep. Sessions, the other (presumed) candidate from District 32 in the 2010 Republican Primary, supported every deficit-laden budget of President George W. Bush's administration.  This included the nifty addition of "supplemental" war funding bills, which allowed Republicans to report deficits at lower amounts ($200 Billion to $500 Billion per year) than otherwise would have been the case had the war spending bills been included ($200 Billion to $300 Billion additional per year).  This practice resulted in over $2 trillion in new debt, and was all signed off on via vote by Rep. Sessions.

The following links show costs of the current wars to further illustrate the above statements and to show that this is not bias on the part of Rep. Sessions' opponent, but well-documented facts pertaining to Sessions' own record.

Chart including clock that tracks the current costs of the wars:  http://zfacts.com/p/447.html

About $1.2 trillion just for the wars:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

More than Vietnam:  http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/11/nation/na-iraq-vietnam11

The 'true' costs:  http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/10/news/economy/costofwar.fortune/index.htm

Now don't turn this into a discussion of whether the war is right or not and who supports and who does not support the troops, etc.  I'm talking strictly dollars and cents here, and the simple fact of the matter is that we are paying for the wars with debt.  That's not smart from a financial perspective any way you slice it.  And Rep. Sessions has signed off on every dollar of that debt.

Let's talk about the deficits.  The following government web site shows the debt approximately doubling between 2000 and 2008--all during Sessions' time in D.C.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm

This site shows an interesting comparison between the deficits of the Clinton years and of the Bush years.  http://zfacts.com/p/519.html  The interesting fact that nobody chooses to point out in crediting President Bill Clinton with eliminating the deficit is that...Republicans controlled the Congress during that time period!  What happened to the balanced budget, Rep. Sessions?  Again, Republicans stopped acting like Republicans and by 2006 Americans became tired of the debt spending.  Not that it has improved, but we want Representatives who will walk the walk that goes with talking the "Lower Taxes, Less Government" talk.

Then there are the 2008 financial bailouts.  As if it weren't bad enough that we took on all those trillions in deficits to the regular budget, we decided to take on a special round of straight up, one-time debt packages.  Links here showing Sessions' support of these.

Sessions and Granger support bailout.  http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/09/most-n-texas-house-members-rej.html  I particularly like the quotes from the Republican Platform in the comments...oopsy, eh, Pete?

Bailout vote fails...Sessions supports anyways!  http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080929_wz_meltdown.c2a79d2f.html

Email from Sessions explaining "situation."  http://obamaredneck.com/2008/10/01/pete-sessions-r-tx-on-the-bail-out/

And from Sessions Watch.  http://sessionswatch.blogspot.com/2008/10/pete-sessions-explains-bailout-to.html

Local Precinct Chair:  http://1704.localprecinct.com/2008/09/25/my-visit-to-congressman-pete-sessions-office/

Hmm...seems Sessions owned between $50,000 and $100,000 in Fannie Mae.  That explains a lot!

http://realtime.sunlightprojects.org/2008/09/26/financial-bailout-who-are-the-big-investors/

Might be why he voted NO on monitoring funds from the 2008 TARP bailout?

http://realtime.sunlightprojects.org/2008/09/26/financial-bailout-who-are-the-big-investors/

I like #3 and #4 which ask about transparency of TARP funds and identification of institutions accessing TARP funds in light of the previous link.  A case of, "I voted against transparency before I voted for transparency"?  Letter from Congressional Republicans (including Sessions) to Sec. Paulson and Chairman Bernanke.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/40284

Enough for now.  I'll delve into the ethics issues and PAC contributions for favors in another piece.