I predicted back in January
that you could expect ads highlighting Rep. Tom Cotton budget votes that denied money to popular Arkansas institutions, including the nearly sacred Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Here it comes. National Democratic campaigning targets Cotton as the only Arkansas congressman to oppose legislation that would establish a national pediatrics research network including the Little Rock hospital. It passed the Republican-controlled House, but is stalled in the Senate. Cotton was only one of 26 Republicans to oppose the measure.

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He is principled. give Tom Cotton that. Many will be hurt by the budget discipline he favors and he’s not afraid to crack the whip, even if the lash is felt by scientists hoping to help gravely ill children. I’m not sure what private enterprise he’d have stand in on this work if the government does not pay for it, but little details like that are missing from a lot of the Cotton campaign to fatten the wallets of the Club for Growth billionaires who back him.

Here’s the funny (weird, not humorous) thing. The Club for Growth, Kochs and others have convinced many Arkies that spending must be reduced and that they, poor Arkies, must endure the pain for the greater good. (Not that the billionaires will suffer.)

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The new ad features a former hospital social worker criticizing Cotton.

I don’t know where his priorities are, but they’re not with Arkansas children.

Zing. All the moreso since it’s true.

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It is also true that Cotton staffers told the Democrat-Gazette at the time that he voted no because the bill had not been through committee. That was untrue. An honest mistake? A lie? You decide. Remember, Cotton went to Harvard and is on an intellectually higher level than the rest of us, according to another one of his hired-gun aides. Closer to the truth, even if partisan, is the Arkansas Democratic Party statement:

“The real reason Congressman Cotton opposed funding for Arkansas’s Children Hospital is because Congressman Cotton’s special interest backers told him to oppose it. Congressman Cotton opposed funding for Arkansas’s Children Hospital and supported tax cuts for billionaires because the Wall Street special interests funding his campaign told him to vote that way.”

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