Rep. Anthony Weiner Hearts Rodeo

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens, doesn’t care about the rodeo championships, even if one guy from Brooklyn is kind of a famous bull rider. “It’s Chuck Schumer, right?” he joked.
 
As the Senate tries to figure out whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts on “millionaires and billionaires,” as Weiner likes to say, Weiner just hopes that President Obama realizes—and quick—that he’s not going to get any help from Republicans.
 
“I see no reason why the President should believe, or we should believe, they’re going to start negotiating in good faith,” he said. “They’re holding unemployment insurance hostage.”
 
In both Democratic and Republican Congresses of years past, Weiner noted, unemployment insurance “was never something that got held up,” and he encouraged Obama to draw a line somewhere and make clear what he’s willing to fight for.
 
After all, the American people fundamentally agree with him, Weiner said, and don’t want to borrow 40 cents on the dollar for every tax cut given the extraordinarily wealthy. The President’s problem, as he sees it, is that “he worships at the alter of bipartisanship, thinking it’s an ends rather than a means. Bipartisanship only works if the other team wants to cooperate.”
 
Obama’s best chance at winning over the American people on this issue, Weiner said, is to drive home the point that tax cuts for everybody could expire because Republicans were holding out on tax cuts for millionaires. “I think that message is a winning message,” Weiner added.
 
But in the midst of Weiner’s stirring analysis, Imus was handed pressing information: the identity of the Brooklyn-born bull rider (Bryan Siegel).  “I and 96 percent of your listeners and viewers don’t care that much,” Weiner noted. “But we can keep plowing through this if you like.”
 
On the subject of the Wikileaks documents, Weiner was of two minds. “Obviously it’s bad whenever any national security thing gets leaked,” he said. “But so much of the Wikileaks are revealing about how phony these countries are that we deal with.”
 
In record after record, countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, and others say one thing publicly, and another behind closed doors. “The only people that were really being kept in the dark were the American public, and the public in those countries,” he said. “And I wonder, what’s the purpose of that secret?”
 
In his opinion, the Wikileaks make the United States looks like “the adults” out there trying to solve problems, while other countries act like complete phonies.
 
“You poor thing,” Imus said. “You’re so naïve.”
 
On Wikileaks, maybe. But Weiner is anything but on the issue of providing health care for 9/11 first responders, more than 10,000 of whom are sick as a result of the air they breathed at Ground Zero while aiding in the clean-up. And that’s on top of the 1,000 who have already died. 
 
The bill has yet to pass the Senate, where it needs just two more votes before becoming law. As for why someone wouldn’t want to vote for it, Weiner chalked it up to ideology; to a dislike for the funding method, which would close a loophole that affords offshore companies a lower tax rate for having jobs overseas; and to an inherent belief that government should not be providing health care to people.
 
“I think if we knew people would still be dying these years later, when we wrote the original fund to help the victims, we would have included them,” Weiner said. “It was just an oversight because we didn’t know the air was that bad.”
 
Back to the all-important issue of rodeo, Weiner was shocked to learn that Madison Square Garden hosts a sold-out event featuring the Professional Bull Riders every year. He had just one follow-up question.
 
“Do people come in after they’ve brushed their tooth? Or before?”
 
-Julie Kanfer