Cornyn A Late Entrant To Battle To Defend Valley Levees As He Uses Coming Hurricane To Bolster His Campaign

Leave it to U.S. Senator John Cornyn to determine that hours before a hurricane could lead to flooding that would likely leave two million people in South Texas homeless, it’s time to play partisan politics.

Cornyn’s campaign pestered the media yesterday afternoon with yet another brilliant announcement: it had sent an email to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Actually, the email had to do with Cornyn asking Reid to immediately have passed a bill Cornyn authored about the levee system in the Rio Grande Valley. However, the most noteworthy aspect of the entire story may well be that Cornyn “sent an email,” because his belated feigned interest in Valley is old news.

Interestingly, the fact that it is “old news” is also news. Cornyn authored his bill to allow county governments in the Valley to be reimbursed for levee repairs in April. That’s only five years AFTER the International Boundary and Water Commission reported that the Rio Grande Valley Levees were in danger and almost three years after Hurricane Katrina highlighted the need for strong levees in all costal areas.

Seriously, it took Cornyn five years to get around to acting on the IBWC’s report? Five years? What was he doing during all of that time? Oh, that’s right: he was acting as President Bush’s personal senator.

Naturally, like his colleague Kay Bailey Hutchison, Cornyn decides that the Valley and Valley projects and issues are only important when it comes time for re-election. The rest of the time, they could care less because the folks in the Valley don’t make up much of his base of support.

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