They Came. They Spent. They Got the Boot.
Liberal pundits are arguing that the GOP lost last week’s election because of scandals and the war, which is certainly in part true. But Democrats conclude from this, as they always reflexively do, that Republicans must move to a more centrist and compromising position on issues. Not so fast.
A Polling Company exit poll finds that 62% of last week’s voters said they wanted fewer federal government services and lower taxes against 25% who said they want more federal government services and higher taxes. It’s still a conservative country, folks — in fact, these numbers track fairly closely to the sentiments expressed by voters after the GOP’s sweeping election victory in 1994. But here’s the most startling difference: This time, only 21% of voters said they thought Republicans would spend less than Democrats. Ouch. It’s amazing Republicans didn’t take a bigger shellacking than they did.
Voters weren’t irrational in believing Republicans could no longer be trusted on the federal budget. In the 104th Congress in 1995-96, federal spending rose by a mere 1% after inflation. In this last Congress, federal spending rose by 8% after inflation — three times faster than the rate of spending increase in the last two years of the Democratic reign of power in the early 1990s.
I asked Kellyanne Conway of the Polling Company what was the main factor behind the GOP defeat. She says that a big problem was that "voters couldn’t finish this sentence: ‘I should vote for Republicans because…’ Then deadly silence." Yes, deadly especially for the GOP Congressional majority.
John Berthoud, president of the National Taxpayers Union, confirms that overspending was a big part of the GOP’s drop-off with voters. Five of the six Republicans who lost in the Senate and most who lost in the House were "big spenders," he tells me. "The attitude of our members," he says, "was that Republicans walked away from the base, the base didn’t walk away from the Republicans." As Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, puts it: "We spent like them, so they voted for them."
One Last GOP Pork Blowout (and You’re Paying for It!)
With nine appropriations bills (involving some $820 billion in spending) awaiting completion before the lame-duck Congress winds up, Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of the lead pork-busters in the House GOP caucus, is asking that all the bills be scraped of pork projects before voting later this week.
One problem, though, is that it’s a mystery just how much pork is contained in these bills because the appropriators treat this information as a highly classified state secret. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, has been raking through the Defense appropriations bills and spotted some 2,070 slices of bacon — and the group is still counting. Among the project fingered so far are a $1 million alternative energy research program in Alaska (where else?) and $2.6 million for the Northern California Institute for Research and Education. The group expects to unearth many more millions of dollars in unjustified spending favors for individual Congressmen when the flyspecking is done.
For his part, Mr. Flake has been making his own list of dubious projects identified in these gargantuan spending bills:
$229,000 for "dairy education"
$1 million for "locomotive demonstration"
$50,000 for a swimming pool in Banning, California
$500,000 for an athletic field in Yucaipa, CA
$20 million for a wood research institute in Missouri
$1 million to promote Kentucky tourism
$6.3 million for a wind demonstration project
My personal favorite, though, is a $100,000 handout for California wineries. Republicans have about three days left in the majority to clean out this contamination in their spending bills. Nancy Pelosi announced this past weekend that if she had her druthers, she would eliminate pork projects entirely. Republicans, on the other hand, continue to defend pork as a legitimate congressional prerogative. No wonder voters in exit polls last week said Democrats would do a better job controlling spending than the GOP. They may be right.