By Capri Catanzaro in Rhode Island’s Future
The Rhode
Island Progressive Democrats of America (RIPDA)
congratulate Speaker of the House Nicholas
Mattiello in his latest example of conservative gamesmanship,
putting the House in recess immediately after hearing that his Senate
colleagues might actually put their two cents into the budget.
Mattiello’s childish, thuggish
action mimics Trump and is an embarrassment to Democrats and the state of Rhode Island.
This wildly unpopular,
unprecedented, and unjustified executive order beckons the question; does
Mattiello even believe in democracy?
This latest failure of our
government to govern–a direct consequence of Mattiello’s childish “I want it
all” attitude–is actually a tremendous loss for everyone.” It is an outrage
that the Speaker is playing games when there is a state to be run.
The Senate and the House budgets
agree on most everything, including fuzzy math, cruel and pointless Medicaid
cuts, DMV closings, and other unpopular measures.
The only true point of contention is
the Senate’s acknowledgement that there is no real provision to pay for
Mattiello’s venerated cuts to the car tax in future years.
We know Mattiello and we know that
he will always put his own oversized ego ahead of the needs of the people.
Unsurprisingly, he also put his own
needs ahead of even those legislators who voted for and supported him the
entire session. The real tragedy here is the stagnation of progressive
legislation in this fiasco.
At the start of this year’s session,
state representatives—intimidated by the threat that Mattiello would block
their legislation as punishment—voted for Mattiello for Speaker in the hopes
that he would allow them to pass one or two bills each.
Mattiello’s hypocrisy is laughable.
How can Mattiello argue that going back on a private, unconfirmed handshake
warrants a complete shutdown of half the statehouse, when Mattiello himself is
going back on promises to pass other representatives’ bills, which hinged on
the public, unanimous vote for Speaker?
Most of the bills introduced by progressives
are in limbo along with the budget, and there is nothing they can do to advance
them.
We continue to hope that the
legislature will see that the only outcome of supporting men like Mattiello is
disappointment and we wish them the courage to vote Nick out of his position as
Speaker and replace him with a leader who is actually interested in doing the
people’s business.
We call upon the House to choose a
new Speaker when they meet later this summer to finish their work, so that the
budget negotiations can be handled by someone whose priority is to do that
work, rather than to play power games.
After decades of crookedness,
unscrupulous double-dealing, and outright depravity in state government, the
citizens of Rhode Island expect so little that this current failure to govern
seems almost like a hiccup rather than as the easily preventable disaster that
it truly is.
As always, we wish for so much more
for ourselves and our state, and we hope that our fellow citizens will join us
in demanding that the Speaker of the House pay a price for his inability to put
the interests of the people of RI ahead of his own ego.
EDITOR’S NOTE: State party
spokesperson Bill Lynch responded with this statement:
“Speaker Mattiello is strongly supported by the Democratic Party because he shares our views of taking care of all people and improving the economy. This criticism is not surprising coming from a small out-of-touch extremist group that is not affiliated with our Democratic Party. They apparently object to car tax relief for every Rhode Islander and other meaningful assistance contained in the state budget for all individuals and families.”
Capri Catanzaro is the
political director of the Progressive Democrats of Rhode Island.
