| File this under "Wondering how these people manage to find their offices in the morning." Freshman Republican and Tea Partier Ann Buerkle--who beat Dan Maffei last year by 567 votes out of 208,181 cast--seems to still be having trouble with the whole "government" idea.
While doing her first town hall meeting, she kept getting questions about her Congressional healthcare benefits. She then insisted to the audience that she didn't understand why people were interested, because taxpayers didn't pay anything for her government healthcare.
It wasn't until one of her staffers was able to pass her a note later on in the event that she corrected herself, and admitted that yes, the taxpayers do pick up the tab, although she dismissed it as being equivalent to any other employer-sponsored healthcare.
But despite the fact that she makes triple the average American household's income, and could easily afford to purchase her own healthcare in the free market, the irony is apparently lost on her that she's accepting taxpayer dollars to subsidize her healthcare, while insisting that a family of four which makes a quarter of her personal income can't do the same. |
