Tough competition, but Cruz coat-holder & Backpfeifengesicht club member Mike Lee is a contender. Tim Mak, at the Daily Beast:
The intellectual leader of the tea party movement in the Senate is secretly holding up a bill to help the residents of Flint, Michigan, who have been poisoned by their own water supply…
Lee is using a Senate tactic used to gum up the works known as a “hold,” which is generally kept secret so the lawmaker can remain anonymous. But two senior Senate sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that Lee is behind the maneuver to stall an utterly uncontroversial provision…
His action—or inaction—comes as lawmakers in the Senate are scrambling to advance urgent legislation that would make hundreds of millions in grants and loans available to Flint, which in January declared a state of emergency after thousands of its residents were exposed to toxic levels of lead.
The initiative, which senators want to add to a larger energy policy bill, ultimately doesn’t cost any new government funds, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, since the proposal is paid for with money redirected from a subsidy for the automotive industry…
It’s not a secret any longer, since his hometown Salt Lake Tribune has published an article subheaded “Grandstanding?”:
Sen. Mike Lee is defending his decision to block a vote on a $220 million package to help Flint, Mich., respond to its lead-poisoned drinking water.
Initially, Lee, R-Utah, was part of a group of senators to place a procedural “hold” on the vote, but that group has shrunk and Lee is the only objecting senator to be identified. At first, he declined to comment, but he decided to break his silence Friday.
“Federal aid is not needed at this time,” Lee said in a statement, noting that Michigan has a budget surplus and a “rainy day fund” that it could tap before turning to Congress. “The people and policymakers of Michigan right now have all the government resources they need to fix the problem. And those public resources are being augmented every day by the generosity of individuals, businesses, labor unions and civic organizations of every stripe from across the country. The only thing Congress is contributing to the Flint recovery is political grandstanding.”
If that’s the case, then it is bipartisan grandstanding.
Michigan’s two senators, Democrats Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, are sponsoring this proposal with Republican Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rob Portman of Ohio…
Mike Lee is up for re-election this year, but the only declared Democratic challenger my weak search skills turn up is “untested” marriage therapist Jonathan Swinton — although Blue Dog Jim Matheson seems to be a possibility. Anybody here know enough about Utah politics to judge whether it would be worth funding an Act Blue page to get Mike Lee away from the national levers of power?