Zeldin's Concern for CD1 is Phony as a Three Dollar Bill

By David Friedman, October 20, 2020 — Abraham Lincoln once said “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Apparently, Congressman Lee Zeldin doesn’t agree. If his extraordinarily self-serving press release is any indication, he seems to think that actually you can fool all the people all the time. Filled with clumsy flattery (what exactly makes CD1 “the greatest congressional district in the country”?), and bursting with self-congratulation for supposedly providing us with a cornucopia of goodies from Washington, he seems unaware that he’s insulting the intelligence of his constituents.

LEE'S MASSIVE EGO COLLIDER
Brookhaven National Lab was here long before Rep. Zeldin went to Washington, and it will be here long after he’s gone. As far as building a new Electron-Ion Collider there, the scientists at BNL had something to do with it. It “brings to conclusion the hard work over the last 20 years to make the case for an EIC,” said Elke-Caroline Aschenauer, a physicist at BNL. Also as part of the selection, New York State pledged $165 million for upgrades of existing infrastructure at BNL, including roads and utilities essential for the EIC facility. Senator Schumer worked for the selection of BNL for years. But Rep. Zeldin grabs the credit all for himself.

Rep. Zeldin notes that CD1 is “nearly completely surrounded by water” and boasts of his efforts to get a dredging operation to control the chronic flooding around Shinnecock inlet. He conveniently forgets to mention, however, that this operation was recently suspended because the dredging equipment was relocated to Palm Beach, Florida, near Mar-a-Lago.

THE METHANE MAN
In any case, dredging is only a stop-gap solution for the long-term threat of climate change and rising sea levels to our nearly water-surrounded district. Rep. Zeldin seems blissfully unconcerned about how the oil and gas industry needlessly spouts millions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. He voted multiple times to block requiring the installation of available and relatively inexpensive methane capture equipment in drilling operations.

REPS THE 1%, NOT NY1
Far from using his powers as a Congressman to serve his constituents, Rep. Zeldin seems more interested in serving Donald Trump as a gambit to enhance his own career as a politician and as a talking head on Fox News. He was the only Long Island Congressman to vote against the bi-partisan bill to increase the SALT tax deduction.

Donald Trump is on a political vendetta against New York. And Rep. Zeldin is on Trump’s side, not New York’s. Aside from his pathetic response to the punitive cap on the SALT deduction, he hasn’t said a peep about the Trump administration’s cancellation of a federal grant to New York State’s health care system, a cancellation that will cost Stony Brook University Hospital alone over $21 million.

In another petty and vindictive move, in February 2020 the Trump administration discontinued the Trusted Traveler Program (TTP) for residents of New York State only. This punished all New Yorkers regardless of who they voted for. The program was reinstated in July after I wrote Rep. Zeldin, asking him what he was doing to reverse this unfair and spiteful policy. After the federal ban went into effect, New York sued the Trump administration; in his October 2020 ruling, District Judge Jesse M. Furman called the ban arbitrary and capricious, reports AP. I have yet to receive an answer from Rep. Zeldin.

The truth is that far from making Washington work for the residents of CD1, Rep. Zeldin is all about making Washington work for himself. He’s afraid to cross President Trump; that might set back his career plans. His claimed concern for the residents of CD1 is as phony as a three-dollar bill.