Most freshmen congressmen tend to keep their heads down until they learn the lay of the land, but not Florida Democrat Alan Grayson. He’s been making waves since he arrived in Washington in January. He really drew attention last week when he declared on the House floor, that the Republicans’ health-care plan amounted to “Don’t get sick,” and “If you do get sick, die quickly.” Another shot heard around the world.
Republicans rushed to demand that Grayson apologize just as Joe Wilson did after his rude outburst at the president during a joint session of congress. They claim Grayson’s behavior was just as untoward as Wilson’s, a faulty comparison at best. Well, they got a quick decisive answer from Rep. Grayson. He said he wanted to apologize “to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.” Okay, so using the word “holocaust’ was a poor choice of words but, the sentiment in his statement is unyielding. Grayson, who is Jewish and says he has relatives who died in the Holocaust, said he wrote the letter to address the concerns his comments caused.
"In no way did I mean to minimize the Holocaust," Grayson wrote in the letter obtained by FOXNews.com. "I regret the choice of words, and I will not repeat it."
I decided to find out about this guy, just as I investigated Joe Wilson, Rick Scott, Max Baucus, Michelle Bachman, and others. Grayson grew up “in the tenements” in the Bronx, attended Harvard Law School, and was the first president of IDT Corp., a telecommunications company, before returning to the practice of law. Recently he has specialized in whistleblower cases targeting companies that allegedly profited from the war in Iraq. He worked from a home office in pink Orlando mansion, driving an aging Cadillac with anti-administration bumper stickers such as “Bush Lied, People Died.”
Shortly after his election, the 51-year-old responded to radio host Rush Limbaugh’s remark that he hoped President Obama would fail by calling Limbaugh a “has-been hypocrite loser,” adding for good measure that “Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict.” Mocking Republicans who apologized after criticizing Limbaugh, Grayson issued an “apology” of his own: “I’m sorry that Limbaugh is one sorry excuse for a human being.” Grayson has used his perch on the House Financial Services Committee to skewer Federal Reserve officials, pressing them on how their money is being spent and forming an unlikely alliance with Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul to demand an audit of the Fed. Some of his interrogations have become YouTube favorites.
Somewhere along the way, Grayson found time to get rich. Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, ranked him 12th among all members of Congress based on financial disclosure forms, with a minimum net worth of $31.12 million. Grayson was among those pushing hard to restrict bonuses of companies that take bailout money. He’s become a vocal member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In February, Grayson issued a statement demanding that Bernard Madoff go to jail, rather than awaiting trail staying in his penthouse ‘free to drink martini, and watch the sun rise,’ while his victims are ‘innocent men in a living hell,’.
After Grayson’s comments on the House floor, Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R., Tenn.) said, “That is about the most mean-spirited partisan statement that I’ve ever heard made on this floor.” Still, Republicans have repeatedly accused Democrats of planning “death panels” as part of their health overhaul. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) on the House floor on July 28, suggested that that the Democrats’ plan would “put seniors in the position of being put to death by their government.”
I’m sure this isn’t the last well hear from Alan Grayson.
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