Washington, DC – Schumer: American People Don’t Care for Pork Spending Tacked Onto Stimulus Bill

Washington, DC – Sen. Charles Schumer came under fire yesterday after saying on the Senate floor that “the American people really don’t care” about unrelated spending items that were tacked onto the economic stimulus bill.

“Let me say this to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little, tiny, yes, porky amendments: the American people really don’t care,” Schumer said. “The American people care far more that there’s a proposal in the bill, this one I pushed, that gives kids a $2,500 credit to families who pay tuition to put their kids through college,” he said.

A few hours after Schumer finished his speech, a video clip of his remarks went “viral,” with nearly 50,000 hits on YouTube.com

The reaction was overwhelmingly negative. “Who keeps voting this schmuck back into office?” asked one YouTube viewer.

More than a dozen viewers also posted his contact information so Web surfers could call him to give their opinions more directly.

Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon would not say if the office had heard from the angry viewers, saying only that they had received “no more calls than usual.”

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said that the wasteful spending that Schumer talked about matters to Americans far more than he thinks.
“Sen. Schumer is wrong if he thinks taxpayers don’t care about billions of dollars of earmarks and pork in the so-called stimulus bill. They do care, because it wastes their money,” Kyl said.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the video “takes my breath away,” and suggested it appeared to be a glimpse into the Democratic game plan.

“Frankly, it seems like they don’t care what’s in the bill . . . It’s the height of arrogance to say, ‘You know what? We won the election, and we can do what we want,’ ” Cornyn said.

In an interview, Schumer complained that the clip was curtailed to skew his point, which was that Americans care more about large relief portions of the legislation than the so-called pork.

In the portion of his floor statement that was not posted on the website, Schumer talked about the bill’s infrastructure improvements and tax benefits that will help taxpayers.

“They care far more about that than about some small provision in the bill that shouldn’t be there,” Schumer said in his speech.

Later, Schumer noted that he was instrumental in stripping many of the offending provisions from the bill. “Don’t parse my words . . . I said I didn’t care about pork when compared to things like college tuition. I also said I wanted to get the pork out, and we did,” Schumer said.