John McCain didn’t let brain cancer keep him from vote
Re “Rep. Joyce Beatty missed narrow vote on PBS, NPR funding due to medical procedure,” June 13: Sorry, Representative Joyce Beatty, but we need to know a bit more about why you missed the House vote to save funding for public broadcasting, AIDS relief, and foreign food help.
Had you and three other absent Democrats bothered to show up, the GOP’s so-called “rescission bill” would have failed, blocking $1.1 billion dollars in cuts to funding that Congress had already approved.
Instead, it passed 214-to-212 sending the bill, and the cuts, on to the Senate.
So why weren’t you there? “A medical procedure that could not be delayed” was the best answer your office could provide.
And it is not enough!
A February 9, 2024, Guardian article headlined “Hospitalized lawmakers showing up for last-minute votes? Not as rare as you’d think” explains why.
It details examples of U.S. lawmakers who did what you didn’t. They were sick but they showed up.
February, 2024. Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat who’d undergone emergency abdominal surgery days before, showed up “in a wheelchair and hospital outfit” to vote against impeachment of then Biden homeland security secretary, Alehandro Mayorkas.
Green’s “no” vote blocked what would have been “the first impeachment of a cabinet secretary since 1876.”
July, 2017. Who could forget Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, freshly diagnosed with brain cancer, who flew to Washington to cast his thumbs-down vote helping to save Obamacare.
June 1964. Senator Clair Engle, Democrat from California, hospitalized with a brain tumor, reached the Senate chamber by ambulance and wheelchair to vote on breaking a filibuster.
As recounted by “The Guardian,” Engle “struggled to speak; instead he pointed to his eye, mouthing the word “aye.”
The vote counted and Senator Engle was in the chamber for the last time nine days later, when the Civil Rights Act was approved.
So, Representative Beatty, tell us more about that “medical procedure that could not be delayed” and which kept you from voting against $1.1 billion in government spending cuts engineered by DOGE, Trump and the GOP.
Bob Singleton, Columbus
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Joyce Beatty’s explanation for missing key vote not enough. I demand answers. | Letter
Reporting by Letters to the Editor / The Columbus Dispatch
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