He was the darling of many Democrats and some Progressives during his run for the Senate but when his voting record in Texas is examined, turns out Beto O’Rourke might not be the great savior of the Democratic Party for 2020 as was first thought.
Amid persistently high economic inequality and a climate change crisis, O’Rourke has voted for GOP bills that his fellow Democratic lawmakers said reinforced Republicans’ tax agenda, chipped away at the Affordable Care Act, weakened Wall Street regulations, boosted the fossil fuel industry and bolstered Trump’s immigration policy.
Reported by investigative journalist David Sirota of Capital and Main, O’Rourke has a long record of supporting Republican agenda(s) and more recently siding withTrump:
• Co-sponsored and voted for legislation that would have made it more difficult for regulators to protect consumers from racial discrimination
• Voted for two Republican bills to lift the oil export ban
• Joined Republicans to vote down Democratic legislation that would have barred drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico
• Supported ‘a package of Republican bills that Democrats said would reduce independent audits of corporations, deregulate stock exchanges, and restrict regulators’ ability to monitor high-frequency trading.’