A Friend’s Quixotic Quest for Congress

At some point, I will have to blog about the consideration I have given to runnig against my big-spending Congressman Henry Waxman, a man who has spent 35 years representing Hollywood while doing nothing to stop the steady drain of entertainment jobs from his district.  Ol’ Henry, like all too many on his side of the aisle, is more concerned with liberal ideology than the issues of his constituency.

Here, however, as in only a handful of districts across the country, including Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, representing the Old Dominion’s close-in suburbs of Washington, D.C., he can get away with it.  For all too many here in Hollywood, like their ideological confrères in our nation’s capital region, liberal politics trumps all else, even box office success.

The ideological makeup of Virginia’s 8th is not deterring my friend Matthew Berry from throwing his hat in the ring against his mean-spirited Representative, Jim Moran.  Matthew announced today the formation of a congressional exploratory committee as he pursues the Republican nomination in that inside-the-Beltway district. He vowed to run a clean office, pointing out that Moran “is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for his involvement in a scandal involving the PMA Group.”

Importantly, Matthew vows to stand up to a spendthrift Congress:

The federal budget deficit this year is more than $1.4 trillion, over three times the previous record, and under current projections the national debt will grow by over $9 trillion in the next ten years. . . . This Congress is taking the United States down the road to insolvency. During this Congress, the United States has lost over 3.5 million jobs and unemployment is now over 10 percent. . . he performance of the current Congress can be summed up in just ten words: too much debt, too few jobs, and too much spending.

Matthew may know what issues resonate with voters across the country, but inside the Beltway, bigger government means more jobs. For, while the jobs picture remains bleak across the nation, it’s not nearly so bad in the nation’s capital.

All that said, I know Matthew. He’s a smart guy and a principled man who would stand up for fiscal discipline. Congress could use a few more men like him, so I wish him well his quest, quixotic though it may be.