Illinois’ downstate congressman Aaron Schock made his first appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press this Sunday, and it didn’t go exactly as planned for the Capitol Hill hunk.
While waxing politic about the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, Schock was interrupted by guest Rachel Maddow who called the youngest Congressman a hypocrite for railing against stimulus money in public while simultaneously touting its benefits back home.
“...Just this week you were at a community college touting a $350,000 green technology education program, talking about how great that was going to be for your district," Maddow said. " You voted against the bill that created that grant. And so that's happening a lot with Republicans sort of taking credit for things that Democratic bills do, and then Republicans simultaneously touting their votes against them and trashing them. That's, I think, a problem that needs to be resolved within, within your caucus, because, I mean, you seem like a very nice person, but that's very hypocritical stance to take.”
Schock appeared flabbergasted by the accusation, perhaps because he didn't think Maddow would be paying attention to his community college speech.
“With all due respect, Rachel, does that mean you're going to give back your Bush tax cuts that you continue to rail against?” Schock replied. “ The fact of the matter is our country operates and [is] govern[ed] by a majority. And I, along with almost all of my Republican colleagues and a good number of Democrats, have voted against the stimulus, the omnibus, all of this runaway spending. But we've lost those battles in the House. And at the end of the day, my … constituents and their children and grandchildren will be on the hook for the debt that's being created by this majority ... and they deserve to have their fair share of federal spending.”
Other guests David Brooks and Harold Ford Jr. jump in and the discussion over stimulus spending devolved into a story about why Washington can’t seem to get it’s bipartisan act together.
Watch the whole exchange here:
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