California Representative John Doolittle was ‘called out’ by the Wall Street Journal for his vote against the Republican Study Committee’s proposed alternative budget, which had it been adopted, would have called for a modest 5% cut in discretionary spending in Washington, D.C. I’m playing phone tag with Congressman Doolittle, and am also waiting to hear from Congressman Richard Pombo (who also voted no) before I pen my own piece on this. But I am amazed that any amount of ‘politics’ would have placed the conservative Doolittle (a founder of the RSC) and the equally conservative Pombo on the wrong side of this vote, upon which their credentials as budget-hawks will be judged. I was sorely disappointed.
This is from today’s WSJ Political Diary:
Fiscal Conservatives: AWOL, As Usual
Every time you think Republicans have turned a corner and are getting serious about the budget, they disappoint yet again. On Thursday, in a vote in the House on Capitol Hill, the pro-spending wing of the party squared off with the budget cutters, and the taxpayers took it on the chin. The appropriators won several billion dollars of extra spending for FY2007 above the Bush baseline.
What was more distressing was the rollcall vote on a pro-taxpayer alternative budget plan sponsored by budget hawks in the conservative Republican Study Committee. Put forward by Reps. Mike Pence and Jeb Henserling, that budget called for elimination of scores of worthless programs and balanced the budget in five years with no new taxes. Mr. Pence called his budget "Contract with America Renewed," because it contained most of the same program eliminations that Republicans had called for back in 1995 — that is to say, back when the GOP still made fiscal restraint a major party priority.
No one expected the tight-fisted budget to pass in this spendthrift environment, but the budget only mustered 94 votes. Mr. Henserling notes that there are more than 100 current Republicans in the House who voted for these cuts 10 years ago, but more than half voted against them this time around — even though the agencies are wasting more money now, and the cobwebs are bigger now, than a decade ago. The only good news is that House Majority Leader John Boehner voted for it, as did the whip Roy Blunt.
Two surprising "no" votes were John Doolittle of California, the founder of the RSC, and Tom DeLay, the former conservative majority leader who is retiring in the coming months. Mr. DeLay said he opposed the cuts to NASA, so his last budget vote in Congress will be a vote to keep the budget flabby and unbalanced. That’s not the legacy Mr. DeLay wants to leave after 20 years of leading the conservatives in the House.
— Steve Moore