Washington -- Rep. Dan Maffei faced new criticism today over his vote for a House Republican bill that led to Tuesday's shutdown of the federal government.
Ursula Rozum, the Green Party candidate for the 24th Congressional District seat in 2012, said Maffei failed to stand up against the tea party wing of the Republican Party that he railed against during the election.
"Maffei promised the voters that he was different from the tea party Republican, Ann Marie Buerkle," Rozum said in a statement. "Yet when the tea party decides to hold the government hostage out of their obsession with Obamacare, Maffei was one of nine House Democrats to vote with them."
Rozum, of Syracuse, received 8 percent of the vote in a three-way race with Maffei and Buerkle, the conservative Republican from Onondaga Hill.
Maffei, D-Syracuse, voted Monday night with House Republicans for a budget bill that included a one-year delay of the new federal health care law's mandate for all individuals to buy insurance. Maffei told The Post-Standard his vote was part of a good-faith attempt to reach a compromise with the GOP and keep the government open.
Rozum said today that Maffei gave in to political extortion.
"Maffei should have stood up for democracy rather than side with the political extortion of the tea party wing of the House Republican caucus," Rozum said.
Rozum and the Green Party have also been critical of the Affordable Care Act and other policies from both major political parties. She was one of two hecklers removed by security when President Barack Obama spoke in August at Henninger High School in Syracuse.
"The Green Party doesn't like Obamacare either since the law's principal objective is to mandate that individuals buy inadequate and expensive health insurance," said Howie Hawkins, of Syracuse, who ran on the Green Party line for Congress in 2008.
"What Congress should have done instead is make health care a right with a single payer Medicare-for-All program," Hawkins said in a statement. "But to now cut off essential services, lay off close to a million workers, and blow off the economic consequences is unforgivable."
