Q Toon: Earmarks the Spot

I've been waiting a long time for a reason to feature my home state Congressman Mark Pocan in a cartoon, and here it is.

Pocan has represented the Madison area in Congress ever since Tammy Baldwin gave up the seat to run for the Senate in 2012. Openly gay throughout his political career and currently the Chair of the House Equality Caucus, he took it personally last month when House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee singled out three LGBTQ+-related projects — "earmarks" — to cut from this year's budget.

Tensions boiled over Tuesday after Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment to the annual funding bill covering the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development to eliminate $3.62 million in funding for three LGBTQ community centers in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

The amendment, which Cole said Tuesday would crack down on “problematic” spending, also prohibits federal funds from being used to fly LGBTQ Pride flags outside government buildings.

It passed Tuesday in a 32-26 vote along party lines.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus and one of 12 openly LGBTQ members of Congress, called the proposal “an embarrassment.”

“This amendment brings this committee to a new low,” Pocan said Tuesday during a markup of the bill. “The fact that you would take away members’ earmarks simply because they refer to the LGBTQ+ community is insane.”

“If you were to take away earmarks because they went to the NAACP or the Urban League, you would rightfully so be called racist bigots,” Pocan said. “But when you do it to the LGBT community, it’s another frickin’ day in Congress.”

I used Pocan's language on Twitter (or Xchan, or whatever it's called now) in my cartoon; he must have had second thoughts about more colorful language. I'm kind of sorry that I didn't keep the "frickin'" in there, though.

As it is, Republicans demanded that Pocan's comments and those of two other Democrats on the committee be taken down, and silenced any further statements he may have wanted to make.

But before that happened, Rep. Pocan pointed out to his Republican colleagues that

"The pride flags that you're so passionate about cost somewhere between, if you look on line, $25 and $40. We are micromanaging, pedantically, dealing with this budget at such a small level, in order to make certain people in your base happy, and in your caucus happy, who have built a brand around hate. So, in doing so, you are doing the silliness of determining whether $25 flags come out of the Appropriations budget."

If the Senate is forced to spend time debating the savings to the nation's budget by prohibiting pride flags at federal facilities, perhaps they could save us even more by prohibiting the Alabama state flag as well.

Take that, Senator Tuberville.