Joe Heck Needs a Reality Check... On His Dirty "Check-gate" Secret

Ah, how convenient! All of a sudden, House G-O-TEA leadership decides to highlight Joe Heck's newest bill. If you're wondering why, I explained back in April.

However, Desert Beacon unearthed even more "inconvenient truth" that Joe Heck is trying to bury with this latest desperate publicity stunt piece of legislation.

Congressman Joe Heck may have introduced legislation on this subject, but it’s not like he’s the first one with the idea. A very similar bill, H. 981, was introduced by Representative Richard Nugent (R-FL5) on March 9, 2011. Congressman Nugent’s bill garnered three co-sponsors and still sits in the House Administration Committee. The House Administration Committee has not yet scheduled a hearing, much less a mark up session, on H.R. 981, which tends to imply that H.R. 5951 will meet a similar fate. There is no Congressional Budget Office scoring of H.R. 981, so those “savings” remain securely in the “potential” category.

If Representative Heck wanted to score points bashing public employee retirement programs — such as the one from which his Democratic opponent draws his pension after 20 years of service as a firefighter —then some symbolic bill like H.R. 981/H.R. 5951 might be appropriate. As serious legislation, the idea hasn’t even secured enough support to make it to a committee hearing in the 112th Congress since March, 2011.

Congressman Heck may also want to dim the spotlight on public employee benefits since his own record has a bit of a blip. His Democratic opponent, John Oceguera, points out that when Heck went to Congress he dissolved his company, putting his wife out of work — the Heck’s then reported unemployment benefits for his wife, thus supplementing the family income.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. As always, Desert Beacon unearthed the real reason why Joe Heck is touting this new bill.

As we discussed over the weekend, Joe Heck has a really ugly scandal in his hands now. Somehow, he has to find a way to make "Check-gate" go away to keep alive his political career. After all, Heck thought he had a ready-made issue to use against John Oceguera. But instead, Heck looks like a hypocrite in berating "big government welfare" while Heck himself benefits from all sorts of "big government welfare".

I wonder what Heck will try next.