Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Pat Tiberi Accuses Deborah Pryce of Recklessly Threatening 200 Columbus Jobs

The Columbus Dispatch delivered a blanket endorsement back in October for Tiberi, Pryce, and Dave Hobson (OH-15,12, & 7), in this last election, claiming that the incuments' ability to bring home the pork justified any of their problematic enabling of the President. One cooperative endeavor was rightly highlighted in the endorsement:

When the Base Realignment and Closure committee had the Defense Supply Center Columbus and its 6,000 jobs on the chopping block last year, the three members, along with state and local officials, were instrumental in arguing that DSCC not only should be spared, but that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service on DSCC grounds should be expanded.

In the recent continuing appropriations bill, spending was re-structured such that the BRAC recommendations would have to be funded separately. Pat Tiberi voted against the appropriations bill, and he gave one solitary reason for doing so:

U.S. Congressman Pat Tiberi (OH-12) voted to protect 200 new jobs at Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC) created during the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Process. The jobs are currently scheduled to be transferred to DSCC in 2007, but are threatened because a Democratic $464 billion dollar spending bill cuts funding for BRAC by more than $3 billion...

...
they will restore funding for BRAC in an upcoming emergency supplemental bill, but that’s not good enough. The Ohio delegation worked together to bring these new jobs to Ohio and with one quick vote, all of those jobs are threatened,” said Congressman Tiberi. “BRAC is not an emergency, the BRAC process is complete and its obligation to provide funding for this process and delaying it just doesn’t make sense.”

You can almost hear the pain in his voice as one member of that delegation, Deborah Pryce, a member of the Franklin County Three, abandoned Central Ohio and made a mockery of the Dispatch by callously dismissing, with one quick vote, those jobs they had worked so hard to bring here.

Of course, it's possible that Mr. Tiberi simply thinks Ms. Pryce is stupid and naive, that she has been duped into thinking that he, Pat Tiberi, is overstating the threat. Either way, I wonder what happened. They seemed to get along so well back in those majority days.

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