Praise for Rep. Justin Amish

I ran across a post from a friend of mine on Facebook that talked about Representative Justin Amish's (R-MI) innovative use of Facebook. It's not unusual for politicians to utilize social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and LikedIn, but Amish is taking it to new levels. He seems to post about every single vote he casts. His most recent vote posted on his Facebook page was on the bill that would "defund" National Public Radio. Some in the House-controlled GOP caucus say this is a cost cutting measure in a time where we're still in an economic recession and the federal government is $14 trillion in debt, but Amish disagrees. Amish, correctly, points out that this proposed legislation doesn't cut a single dime out of the budget. What it does is bar the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from giving funds it controls to NPR. CPB will still have these funds to give to some other entity. Due to this, Amish only voted "present" but the bill did pass out of the House of Representatives.

It's not uncommon for politicians to use social media to talk about their votes, but most don't do it to the extent Amish and his staff do. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), who is running for a 7th term, tends to only post about votes on bills which he supports and that also pass out of the Senate. Lugar's social media outlets were pretty quiet on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which he opposed, but it ended up passing. Similarly, his social media didn't talk much about the proposed DREAM Act, which he supported, but it didn't pass out of the United States Senate. He did, however, post a lot about his support of the START Treaty, which did pass the Senate.

Kudos to Representative Amish. I hope our other Congresscritters will take a look at what Amish and his staff are doing, and more will follow in his footsteps.