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Congressman Roy Blunt was in Springfield Tuesday to address a billboard that blasts him for taking money from the insurance industry. KSMU’s Missy Shelton reports.
If you drive north on Kimbrough, where it becomes Benton Avenue and crosses the Martin Luther King, Jr. bridge, you’ll see a billboard that claims Congressman Roy Blunt has taken more than half a million dollars from the insurance industry. It also poses this question: "Is that why he won’t take our side on health care reform?"Blunt met with reporters underneath the sign to address that very question.
Blunt says, “This billboard would ask me to be on the side that Missourians are not on in the healthcare fight. Instead of talking about all the things I’ve been talking about for years that would make the insurance companies have to be more competitive, offer better products, give people more choices, they’d like to suggest I’m not only for the status quo but for the status quo because of money from the insurance industry.”Blunt says the amount of money cited by the billboard doesn’t give the full picture. He says it’s a career-long total of contributions he has received from any person or entity with ties to insurance companies. He says many of those contributions came from individual citizens who identified themselves as working for insurance companies. But the organization behind the billboard says that distinction doesn’t matter. Julie Burkhart is executive director of the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition, which paid for the billboard.
Burkhart says, “The billboard’s purpose is to highlight that Representative Blunt is not working in the best interest of Missourians and that is, working to pass a bill that provides for quality and affordable healthcare, with a choice of a public or private plan for all Missourians.”
At his press conference, Blunt, a Republican also said the billboard is a political maneuver by groups that support Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. Like Blunt, Carnahan is a major contender in next year’s US Senate race. Pro Vote’s Julie Burkhart says the billboard is strictly about the healthcare debate and notes that Pro Vote does not endorse candidates for federal offices.
