BATON ROUGE — The recklessness of shutdown fever is catching in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District, with three of the Republican candidates running for the open seat saying publicly they would back another government shutdown, like the one last fall that cost Louisiana more than $90 million in economic activity.
“The Louisiana Republican Party has become the party of reckless irresponsibility, as their candidates in the Sixth District have enthusiastically endorsed shutting down the federal government and endangering the livelihoods of thousands of Louisiana families,” said Louisiana Democratic Party Executive Director Stephen Handwerk. “But what can you expect when one of their leaders, David Vitter, blithely stated, ‘I’m all for it,’ before the last shutdown?”
At a forum held last Tuesday by the Republican Party of East Baton Rouge Parish, three of the candidates went on the record as backing another shutdown:
Craig McCulloch: “If we have to shut the government down, so be it.”
Lenar Whitney: “I would shut the government down.”
Norman Clark: “In the last government shutdown, the country ran better with the government not there.”
“The voters of Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District deserve a representative that will work across the aisle to find solutions, not someone that merely parrots whatever the Tea Party extremists are saying,” said Handwerk.
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