I've heard Republicans blame Bill Clinton for everything, but Frank LoBiondo still surprises me.

by: Hopeful

Wed Oct 01, 2008 at 01:58:50 AM EDT

I wasn't able to go to the NJ2 debate yesterday between Representative Frank LoBiondo and challenger Dave Kurkowski, but Kurkowski describes how Frank LoBiondo was questioned about his role in squandering over twenty billion dollars:

"I wasn't the only one last night asking LoBiondo to explain his role in this scandal," Kurkowski said. "He was supposed to be looking out for taxpayers and for the Coast Guard. As usual, LoBiondo refused to take responsibility for his actions, passing the buck to-and this is a new one-Bill Clinton. As far as I know, President Clinton wasn't the chairman of the Coast Guard subcommittee."

That's really pathetic. Here are the major dates in the Washington Post article on Deepwater:

Deepwater, awarded in 2002 and modified in 2005,...
The first problems appeared in 2004, ...

Bill Clinton wasn't even President! But even if Bill Clinton personally programmed the computers that miscalculated the weight of the ships and made the radios that were not waterproof, LoBiondo still bears major responsibility. After all, we already knew he wasn't running the shipyard.

Hopeful :: I've heard Republicans blame Bill Clinton for everything, but Frank LoBiondo still surprises me.

If you've forgotten what LoBiondo has to do with this, the NY Times article on Deepwater describes the disastrous development of the program. While LoBiondo was plainly reponsible for oversight of the Coast Guard through his subcommittee chairmanship throughout the period, we know he intervened to prevent the problems from being fixed in 2005:

To fight back, the Coast Guard and contractors relied on Congressional allies, led by Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, Representative Frank A. LoBiondo, Republican of New Jersey, and Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi.
The lobbying effort paid off. In September 2005,...

LoBiondo's major blunder wasn't that he oversaw the Coast Guard while its program went bad, it was that he actively prevented the bad program from be addressed in time. Blaming Presidents of a different century won't change that, though maybe twenty billion dollars is not enough money to worry about anymore.