Arizona Representative Ron Barber will be donating his pay to Southern Arizona charities for as long as federal employees are furloughed by the shutdown – surely, with the hope that those charities will not be needed by those federal employees during the show of a government shutdown.
“I will stand with federal employees who have been furloughed and refuse to accept my pay until the shutdown is resolved,” Barber said on Tuesday. “I will, instead, donate my salary during the shutdown to charities that serve Southern Arizonans.”
As long as the shutdown continues, Barber will select three charities each day for his pay donations.
Because of the shutdown, about 800,000 federal employees might see their paychecks delayed.
Late Monday night, as the shutdown deadline was minutes away, Barber supported a continuing resolution that would have funded the government through mid-December. The bill also would have delayed for one year the fines required under the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act – a proposal that Barber supported in July.
Barber stressed that he opposes repeal of the Affordable Care Act but said that he “has continuously called to keep the many positive benefits of the Affordable Care Act and to fix the parts of the law that need revisions to make it work for Arizona seniors, middle class families and small businesses.” Most recently, on Saturday, he voted against defunding or a one-year delay of the entire Affordable Care Act.
Barber said he was “furious that the members of Congress have been unable to come together and complete one of our primary constitutional responsibilities – funding the government,” and most of his constituents agree. They also hope that Barber’s act of charity is not lost on the limousine liberals who support him.
During this faux crisis, that could lead to a real crisis if Congress doesn’t curb spending, many of Arizona’s small business people hope that Matt Damon will film a movie in Arizona without the need of a tax credit, or that the First Lady will take a vacation here so that hundreds of empty hotel rooms can be filled with her vast staff, or maybe even the President might enjoy a golf outing at one of our dying golf courses.
We do not need charity, but we do need revenue. If Representative Barber could get his rich friends to follow his lead, the small businesses, which will surely go out of business under the weight of Obamacare, could live to fight another day and elect a whole new group of people who will play us for rubes.