BROOKLYN/STATEN ISLAND FOCUS: Congressman Mike McMahon Gets It

One thing I have always been willing to do is admit when a politician exceeds my expectations. For example, when he first ran for Assembly, I pretty much had pegged Hakeem Jeffries as being a Bruce Ratner pawn. I think some of his early labor supporters had as well, though they may have seen that as a good thing while I saw it as a bad thing.

I had a low expectation of Hakeem. Although I may not completely agree with him, I have to admit he was far better than I had expected and when Ratner showed he had no sensitivity to the black community and was willing to abandon his affordable housing promises at the drop of a hat, Hakeem Jeffries at least to some degree backed off from his support of Ratner's Atlantic Yards overdevelopment project.

When Mike McMahon ran for Congress, I supported his opponent, Steve Harrison. I was more for Harrison than I was against McMahon, but over time I found some of McMahon's equivocating on Iraq worrisome. In essence, he had seemed to be telling the Conservative Party one thing, and progressive Democrats another. It seemed hard to reconcile his comments even when made only 2 weeks apart. So I was wondering if we had one of those "Democrats" who are really stealth Republicans in our midst that is all too common in NYC (e.g. Noach Dear, Roger Adler, Michael Tobman).

Recently Congressman McMahon exceeded my expectations in two ways, both having to do with Obama's stimulus package. Mike McMahon has not only been a strong supporter of (as well as participant in) Obama's stimulus package, but he also recognizes better than most Brooklyn Democrats where that stimulus money should go. From the Brooklyn Papers (note: I would have posted this earlier, but the site being down and my being busy delayed it):

Bay Ridge’s freshman Rep. Mike McMahon backed the nearly $800-billion federal stimulus package on Friday...

No Republicans voted for the bill, officially HR 1, and McMahon had an explanation.

“The tax cuts in this bill are not for the rich, but for the middle class,” he said. “The stimulus invests in schools, highway and road construction and, most important, mass transit. The vision here, for the first time, is to have the federal government invest in mass transit, as it should.”

Amen! This is the kind of thing I have wanted Democrats to be saying and McMahon has said it. But McMahon also added a good amendment to the bill:

“It was my amendment that added $3 billion for transit to the original House package, which brought it up to $10 billion,” he said. “The Senate scaled it back to $8 billion, but there’s still $1.2 billion that will be coming to New York...”

“The priority is fixing train stations and getting ferry service from Bay Ridge to Manhattan,” he said. “I do not see Atlantic Yards as a priority for the money from this package.”

Put money into mass transit and not making rich developer Ratner even richer. McMahon gets it and in this way seems a better Democrat than Ratner slaves like Marty Markowitz and Vito Lopez. Marty and Vito love to pour money into Ratner's pocket...in essence behaving just like the Republicans who want to give tax breaks only for the rich. Congressman McMahon gets that benefitting working and middle class Americans, both with tax cuts and transit, helps America.

I should add that the rest of his voting record so far has also been good and belies my concerns that he might be a stealth Republican. For example:

Yes on H.R. 11 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009

Yes on H.R. 2 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009

This is in contrast to some of the Midwest Blue Dogs out there who have been going against Obama's agenda.

So even though I didn't support him in the primary, and even though I stand by my support of Steve Harrison, I am pleased with how Mike McMahon has approached the stimulus package: backing Obama, supporting money for mass transit, calling Republicans on their willingness only to help the rich, and calling Brooklyn's Ratner Democrats on their over eagerness to pour all money possible down the bottomless gullet of Bruce Ratner and his Atlantic Yards fiasco.