Jim McDermott: I voted against the Christmas resolution because it only stated "obvious facts"

And also because it wasted precious congressional time.

Unlike those Ramadan and Diwali resolutions that he did vote for, I guess.

“Obviously, it’s a protest vote against Steve King,” the Iowa Republican who sponsored the resolution that passed 372-9, McDermott said. Democrats cast all the nay votes.

McDermott supported House resolutions this fall to recognize the Islamic holiday of Ramadan and the festival of Diwali, celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. He drew the line at Christmas, he said, because the resolution only stated “obvious facts” that Christianity was the predominant faith in the U.S. and that many Christians and non-Christians celebrated Christmas.

“It’s Christmas time. There’re lots of Christians in the U.S. Hurray for Christmas,” McDermott said, giving his take on the resolution.

Rather than “wasting time on this stuff,” he said, people should be protesting President Bush’s veto of legislation that would have boosted federal funding of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, by $35 billion over five years. Bush had sought a much smaller increase.

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Here’s King’s resolution and, for comparison, the Ramadan resolution, which states many obscure, otherwise undiscoverable facts like (a) there are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, (b) they celebrate a holiday called Ramadan, and (c) Ramadan began on September 13. He’d have been on firmer ground noting that the Ramadan resolution went out of its way to refer to the war on terror and the need to make common cause against jihadis, a distinction that in theory makes King’s proposal comparatively unnecessary. But in that case, how do you explain the yes vote on the Diwali resolution?

Update: We’ve heard the “waste of time” excuse for a vote offered before. It’s the left’s version of “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

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