Man in a glass house

Rep. Leonard Lance says that if the House Majority PAC is going to attack him for receiving a taxpayer-funded salary, they should hit Democrat Tom Malinowski for the same thing.

The Lance campaign says that Malinowski was on the government payroll from 1994 to 2001, and again from 2013 to 2016.  Actually, they’re one year off: Malinowski worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1988.  He worked at the State Department and then in the Clinton White House; he returned to the public payroll as Assistant U.S. Secretary of State under President Obama.

But Lance doesn’t say that’s been in Congress for a decade, spent 18 years in the New Jersey Legislature, and seven years as an assistant counsel to the governor.

That means Lance has been on the public payroll for 35 years, or more than three times as long as Malinowski was.    In other words, Lance has spent 53% of his life on the taxpayer payroll while Malinowski has spent just 20% of his, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The Republicans have criticized Malinowski for not paying local property taxes in the 7th district.

Malinowski owns a home in Washington, where he’s held a series of increasingly important posts; he rents in New Jersey, where he returned last year to run for Congress.  Lance owns a home in New Jersey and rents in Washington, his staff said.

Still, with a month left in the mid-term election, rhetoric runs high.  Here’s what Lance’s campaign manager had to say about the Democratic candidate: “Taxpayer-funded salaries, gold-plated Cadillac private health care…Tom Malinowski has lived on the government’s dole for most of his professional life.  All the while affording a million-dollar home in Washington, D.C.  Hypocritical attacks against Leonard Lance show he’s just an out-of-touch Washington insider New Jersey taxpayers can’t trust.”