Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, whose 8th District of Virginia includes the City of Falls Church, became emotionally charged and increasingly emphatic during his remarks to the monthly luncheon of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce today, especially when the topics of the GOP’s intransigence in Congress and the current Occupy Wall Street protests were discussed. “Congress is the most partisan its ever been, and frankly, it stinks,” he intoned. He said the Republicans’ goal is not to get legislation passed, but to bring down President Obama. “There used to be 353 centrists in the House in the 1980s, and 60 in the Senate. Now there are zero,” he complained.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, whose 8th District of Virginia includes the City of Falls Church, became emotionally charged and increasingly emphatic during his remarks to the monthly luncheon of the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce today, especially when the topics of the GOP’s intransigence in Congress and the current Occupy Wall Street protests were discussed. “Congress is the most partisan its ever been, and frankly, it stinks,” he intoned. He said the Republicans’ goal is not to get legislation passed, but to bring down President Obama. “There used to be 353 centrists in the House in the 1980s, and 60 in the Senate. Now there are zero,” he complained.
On the Occupy Wall Street protests, he raised his voice saying, “Good for them! You protests! You march!,” adding “This is what democracy is about. That’s who we are, its what the American revolution was about. Not since 1928 has the disparity between the top one percent in our economy and the bottom 90 percent been so great.” Moran later told the News-Press that he’d met with leaders of Occupy Wall Street in his office on Capital Hill and told them, “Learn the issues and keep it up!”
He also assailed the nation’s “baby boomer generation” for being “the greediest generation in our history.”
“It’s a cultural issue,” he said of current conditions. “The baby boomers are too damn spoiled. Their political leaders have told them they have to sacrifice nothing. They are told what they want to hear, instead of what they need to know. Very few will sacrifice. It’s all about me, me, me! It’s not good. It’s wrong, and I’m ashamed.”
He contrasted today’s baby boomer culture with that of its predecessors, when the nation rallied to fight in World War II for “a more noble purpose.” Today’s problems, he said, “A very serious, worse than at any point in our lifetimes.”
He was not optimistic about things changing anytime soon, and noted that if the Congressional super-committee fails to come up with an agreement soon, and he said there is “less than a 50-50 chance it will,” then there will be automatic discretionary spending cuts of $600 billion in defense that will decimate the economy of Northern Virginia.
