ST. LOUIS RADIOACTIVE-WASTE VICTIMS ARE ABOUT TO GET SCREWED. AND ANN WAGNER 'OWES THEM AN APOLOGY'

I don't often quote Josh Hawley. But he was right to demand that Wagner own up to her 'shameful' betrayal of our region's citizens

My first official campaign promise is a promise about my campaign.

We will not let my opponent Congresswoman Ann Wagner slink away from one of the worst derelictions of duty that any elected positions can commit. She sold out on the people she represents, and their neighbors.

She did it precisely three months ago today, on March 7. She did it publicly and on the record. She did it at the very moment the U.S. Senate had passed a historic bill that would provided $3.7 billion in compensation to St. Louis-area residents who were literally poisoned by their federal government.

And she did it with no ambiguity, as reported by the Kansas City Star, upon passage of the Senate bill:

“While it has the support of President Joe Biden, the bill will face a tough road in the House, where a narrow Republican majority is looking to cut government spending, not expand it. The bill is anticipated to cost around $50 billion,” the Star reported.

And here’s how it reported Wagner’s kill shot:

“We’re just not looking to raise our deficits and debts any further than they already are,” said Rep. Ann Wagner, a St. Louis County Republican. “So there needs to be a legit pay-for on this.”

Today, it appears that Wagner got her way, as expressed of March 7, but which she has since tried to pretend she never said. Here’s the latest today from her fellow Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley, who had sponsored the Senate bill.

“RECA expires today because the House has done nothing.” Hawley now is calling out House Speaker Mike Johnson as the culprit, but someone else was the object of his anger when he had tweeted that very night of March 7:

“Shameful for Ann Wagner to turn her back on her constituents - after doing nothing on this issue for years. St. Louis deserves better than this.”

And then this:

“RECA passes the Senate with a massive bipartisan vote - and Ann Wagner immediately attacks it? Whose side is she on? Not Missouri’s.”

And this:

“Ann Wagner and Mike Johnson owe America an apology.”

Wagner most certainly owes that apology, but it will not be forthcoming. Instead, she has fallen back on her tried-and-true strategy of pretending she never did or said something that turns out to be embarrassing.

On March 21 — two weeks to the day after Wagner declined to pick up the baton of the Senate bill and run with it as a Republican veteran in the House – the House did precisely what she had advocated, which was to vote down the bill as too expensive.

By then, Wagner had caved into the pressure from Hawley and other Republicans. Acting as if her initial betrayal never had happened, she took to the House floor to declare, “I am outraged” that the House voted down the measure for the precise reasons she had advanced just two weeks before.

Incredibly, she garnered her intended “I am outraged” headlines in the media, which largely accommodated her memory loss. She neither acknowledged her change of heart nor issued the apology that Hawley rightly demanded.

The only important fact is that Wagner didn’t do what she didn’t do. That would have been to advocate for St. Louis victims when it mattered.

When I’ve discussed this with voters from Maplewood to Oakville to Union, and points in between, most never heard of the “legit pay-for” Wagner said was needed for her to support the Senate bill. As she well knows, “legit pay-for’s” are about as rare as ethical conduct by Donald Trump.

A “pay-for” is a provision for specific new taxes or revenues, or making other specific cuts, to offset new spending in a Congressional bill. Wagner’s words were Congress-speak for, “I oppose this thing.”

I can assure you, from first-hand-experience, that people throughout our 2nd District need not have lived near the scene of the crime to be disgusted by Wagner’s betrayal of their fellow St. Louis residents. Wagner is going to “legit pay for” that betrayal.

Because we’re not going to let her forget it.