During a recent meeting on financial reform, one congressman insinuated that minorities are not "average, good American people" and said he was not fighting for people that aren’t responsible, that don’t know what the hell they’re doing or don't care what they're doing." Must have been one of those awful Republicans, right? Nope, it was Representative Paul Kanjorski (D-Pennsylvania).

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Kanjorski spokeswoman Abigail McDonough claims the comments were taken out of context but it's hard to see how this statement from the congressman could be:

"We're giving relief to people that I deal with in my office every day now unfortunately. But because of the longevity of this recession, these are people - and they're not minorities and they're not defective and they're not all the things you'd like to insinuate that these programs are about - these are average, good American people." (source)

Ms. McDonough continued in her attempt to defend Representative Kanjorski by saying, "In his impassioned plea for conferees to adopt Pennsylvania's model program to help homeowners facing foreclosure to stay in their homes, the Congressman was stating that many people insinuate that those who benefit from government programs are those not looking for jobs, but that those suggestions are wildly inaccurate." But that's not what he said.

Representative Kanjorski is currently running for a fourteenth term in Pennsylvania's 11th Congressional district. His Republican opponent is Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta who said the congressman's argument was "outrageous and shows how out of touch Kanjorski is with the real world." (source)