McCotter Rocks the Hill With New Policy CD

April 7, 2008
By Emily Heil and Anna Palmer, Roll Call Staff

It Has a Good Beat. A CD of House Members speechifying in earnest tones might not be headed for the top of the Billboard charts, but Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) is doing his rockin’ best to jazz up the Republican Policy Committee’s message.

On Friday, McCotter was distributing a bootleg version of a CD of the committee’s members giving speeches on not-so-sexy topics like health care, taxes and terrorism —all dressed up to look like a rock ’n’ roll album.

He tells HOH that the CD was an alternative to an “eight-foot stack of policy papers.”

“Hopefully, it’s much more conducive to thought and discussion,” he says. The CDs distributed last week were a preliminary version, he says, and he’ll present the final version to House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) this week. “You don’t give Murray the K the session tapes,” he tells us. (He’s referring to Murray Kaufman, the rock impresario who influenced bands including the Beatles, natch).

In the liner notes, McCotter credits each of the speakers with “vocals” on the album’s tracks. The liner notes for “Freedom Songs: The American Empowerment Agenda” also include old black-and-white photographs of people listening to the radio, with a superimposed logo featuring McCotter playing guitar, rock-god-style, behind the back. Elsewhere in the notes, the zany McCotter thanks the American people: “You are the blessed children of liberty and the hope of humanity,” as well as “staffs of hard-working roadies.”

Instead of trying to make too much sense of the album, HOH figures it’s best to simply take McCotter’s own advice and just, as he implores listeners, “dig it.”