Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who is the most-recognized new face on Capitol Hill, displayed her ignorance about how the American political system works, and who ultimately pays for federal funding.
On Saturday, while touting her Green New Deal blueprint to a group of supporters, she said, "I’m like, you try,” in an imaginary conversation to her detractors. “Until you do it, I’m the boss! How about that?!"
She tweeted earlier, “Yup. If you don’t like the #GreenNewDeal, then come up with your own ambitious, on-scale proposal to address the global climate crisis.” She added, “Until then, we’re in charge - and you’re just shouting from the cheap seats.”
Ocasio-Cortez is one of 435 House members and has been on the job less than two months, and suddenly she’s the boss? The fact that she’s known by her three initials, something usually associated with Democratic presidents like FDR, JFK, and LBJ, must have gone to her head.
Conservative actor James Woods gave her an elementary civics and history lesson.
“So, you may have missed this, but the way it works in America is YOU work for US,” he tweeted. “The last time somebody told Americans to sit down and shut up was 1776. If you ever learn to read, look it up. You are not only an idiot, you’re an arrogant idiot, and there is nothing more dangerous.”
The Daily Wire’s editor in chief Ben Shapiro’s criticism was, on the surface, gentler, but nonetheless delivered a sharper sting by comparing her to a toddler.
“My 2-year-old also says he’s the boss,” Shapiro said. “He is, in fact, not the boss.”
The evening before, Ocasio-Cortez made a boast about her generosity toward her staff that was riddled in errors and misconceptions.
“Leadership starts with our choices,” she began. “That’s why I decided that no one on my staff will make less than $52k/year. It’s likely one of the highest entry-level salaries on the Hill. We pinch pennies elsewhere, but it’s worth every dime to pay a living wage.”
First of all, it’s not her money — it’s the taxpayers’ money. Author, Fox News contributor, and former Secret Service officer Dan Bongino put it this way:
“She’s NOT paying this ‘living wage,’ YOU are,” he said. “Does she really believe her own nonsense?”
But more than that one has to ask where and how exactly is she pinching pennies.
Was it by hiring a smaller staff? Whenever businesses are forced to pay artificially inflated wages — salaries higher than what the market dictates — they make up the difference by reducing staff.
If that was Ocasio-Cortez’s solution, that means that some new college graduates have been denied their first step up the ladder to success, and her own constituents may be denied service.
Did her penny-pinching include giving up a residence in her home congressional district?
At first blush this sounds ridiculous. No one would do that, right?
Except that she and her staff have been dodging residency questions directed by the New York Post lately. Not only can the newspaper find no place within her district that she returns to, it hasn’t been able to come up with a local phone number or a district office. That didn’t seem to be a problem for New York’s other three freshmen House members.
"We will not be commenting," Ocasio-Cortez's spokesman Corbin Trent told the Post in response to four questions, including "Where does the congresswoman live?"
A final question — especially given Ocasio-Cortez’s infatuation with socialism. Did her penny pinching include dipping into her own $174,000 congressional salary?
That would probably be a no.
There remains one bright spot to Ocasio-Cortez’s election to Congress. She said that President Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House prompted her to run for the House seat that she ultimately won last November.
She added that had she not campaigned and won, she’d probably be teaching high school students right now.
So her election may have saved an entire generation of students from being fed nonsense and misinformation.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He’s also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. To read more of his reports - Click Here.