Shea-Porter Ignores Reality of Energy Crisis, Ready for Another Vacation

For Immediate Release:                                                                  Contact: Press Office
September 18, 2008                                                                                     (202) 479-7070

 Shea-Porter Ignores Reality of Energy Crisis, Ready for Another Vacation
After Voting for Sham “Energy” Bill, Shea-Porter Wants Head Home to Spin Record

Washington- Showing concern over her re-election odds, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) voted today to adjourn Congress for another vacation without making sure that energy legislation is enacted (House Roll Call 610). After Rep. Carol Shea-Porter's last five-week paid vacation, she returned to Washington just long enough to vote for a sham “energy” bill designed only to give herself political cover to try and distract voters from her “do-nothing, drill-nothing” record on energy.  But unfortunately for Americans still feeling the pain at the pump, the Shea-Porter-backed bill is “dead on arrival” in the Senate and has no chance of becoming law. 

Shea-Porter voted today to block a requirement that Congress remain in session until comprehensive energy legislation is enacted into law.  And to prevent another political stunt like the one Carol Shea-Porter and her Democrat leaders pulled earlier this week, Shea-Porter would have to earn her next vacation by passing real “comprehensive” energy legislation that must:

• Allow states to open up OCS for leasing
• Open ANWR for exploration
• Permit the states to extract oil shale
• Extend expiring renewable energy incentives
• Pave the way for new refineries and nuclear power facilities
• Promote clean coal and coal-to-liquid
• Reform lawsuits

The last time Shea-Porter went on a taxpayer-funded vacation, House Republicans stayed in Washington for five weeks to protest the Democrats’ inaction and obstruction on energy.  Now that the House has returned, Carol Shea-Porter has picked up right where she left off, stifling all real energy solutions (House Roll Call 598) while ducking behind sham bills her Democrat leaders offer as “an elaborate exercise to give their Members a heaping dose of political cover” (Roll Call, 9/15/08) (House Roll Call 599). On Carol Shea-Porter's next vacation, leading up to Election Day, she will surely try to claim that she voted for an “energy” bill, even when she knew full well it had no chance of providing relief to her constituents in New Hampshire. 

“Carol Shea-Porter just returned from a five week vacation and now she’s preparing for another,” said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain.  “For how much Shea-Porter has come to embody the Washington establishment she sure doesn’t seem to spend much time actually working for results in Washington.”

It’s a good thing Carol Shea-Porter doesn’t like spending much time in Washington because her constituents in New Hampshire are going to stop sending her there.