US Senate Dems Debate Food Service
Monday, June 9th, 2008 By David Hansen
The Washington Post reports on the flap over privatizing the Senate’s cafeterias.
Now remember, gasoline is $4.00/gallon, 130,000 troops are afield in Iraq, tens of thousands of young adults will be graduated by public schools unable to read, and the Democrat senate caucus finds time to not only contemplate, but to debate, the issue of privatizing the Senate food service. Have they ever heard of the phrase “no-brainer”?
Here’s what Ohio’s junior senator had to say about this burning conflict:
I know what happens with privatization. Workers lose jobs, and the next generation of workers make less in wages. These are some of the lowest-paid workers in our country, and I want to help them,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a staunch labor union ally, said recently. The wages of the approximately 100 Senate food service workers average $37,000 annually.
Perhaps the next generation of government employees make less, Sherrod, but the next generation of taxpayers, that is, the vast majority of your constituents, get to keep more of their hard-earned money. Whose side are you on, anyway?
The chattering classes love to declare conservatism to be in intellectual retreat. I’m sorry, but if the best the newly ascendant liberals in D.C. can offer in the way of protecting American workers is a stand for subsidizing lousy food for Senators, staffers, journalists, lobbyists and other hangers-on at the Capitol, then it is the Left that lacks a positive vision for this country.
