When the public elects an individual to serve as their representative in the government they have some expectations of those officials act. With few exceptions we expect our elected officials to serve us with honor, dignity, honesty, and wisely. There are times however when our elected officials fail to live up to those expectations. For the most part we forgive them their inadequacies; after all they are just human beings. However there comes a time when forgiveness is not enough.

Last Friday the United States House of Representatives narrowly passed a piece of legislation in which the body had little opportunity to review the bill. According to some of the accounts that I have read; at the time of the vote there was just one copy of the bill available for review. To further stifle review of the legislation House leadership managed to successfully limit debate on the bill in order to rush it through. These actions should have served as warning signs to the Representatives that something was wrong with this bill. If the legislation was of such a great value House leadership should have allowed adequate time to review and debate the measure. Instead they ran it through the House with a speed that would make Dale Earnhardt, Jr. jealous.

Seriously folks, the sheer speed with which this legislation was rammed through the House should have set warning bells. It should have indicated that someone was trying to hide something and that the bill could not withstand any extended scrutiny. Unfortunately three of Iowa’s Representatives failed to recognize this. At the end of the vote the bill was passed with a 219-212 difference with Braley, Loebsack, and Boswell voting for the bill.

Iowan’s deserve an explanation of why they supported the bill from these three and yet in the wake of this disastrous vote those three have remained strangely silent. They have not inundated the media with press releases. They have not released statements full of flowery descriptions of the bill. The failed to respond to repeated emails and phone calls to their offices. Essentially they have refused to inform us, the public of the reasoning behind their vote. So while we can forgive our elected officials their inadequacies, we cannot forgive the betrayal of our trust.