Only Tea Party Republicans Voted to Cut Spending
tpcadmin, 1/25/19.
Remember the Tea Party? That insurgent
movement of grassroots conservatives, libertarians, and
independents who
sprung up a decade ago vowing to end Washington’s reckless spending?
What happened to all that?
Fiscal responsibility might not be a priority for today’s GOP unfortunately, but it turns out
libertarian-leaning Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, as well as
and Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., actually kept their
promise. Not coincidentally, they are some of the most high profile members to
get elected backed by the Tea Party and the Ron Paul-inspired
liberty movement
This is important, because most
Republicans haven’t kept their promise to push for smaller government.
The Coalition to Reduce Spending, the only Washington-based organization I’m aware of
dedicated singularly and specifically to cutting government spending, announced
on Wednesday that their unique SpendingTracker.org has
now “collected legislative spending records dating back to 2009, creating the
largest such database of spending records in existence.”
SpendingTracker.org is probably the
coolest thing ever invented for anyone who still cares about reining in our
debt. Many of us are familiar with the famous national debt clock in New York City that is now up to a whopping $22 trillion. SpendingTracker.org tells which us
politicians are responsible for it — which is most of them.
The Republican least responsible for
reckless spending in his overall career is Amash, who according to
SpendingTracker.org, “voted to cut spending by roughly $165 billion in the most
recent Congress.”
No one should be surprised that two
of the most Tea Party senators actually followed through on what
they promised voters they would do during their campaigns.
But Paul and Lee were the only ones.
Reminder: There were 51 Republicans in the majority-GOP Senate last year.
To be clear, the Coalition to Reduce
Spending is a nonpartisan group that strictly tracks members’ individual
spending votes in real terms, based on what actually passes and becomes
legitimate new spending. The group does not seek to elevate Republicans above
Democrats, and in fact, SpendingTracker.org finds that some Democrats have
better fiscal spending voting records than most Republicans.
The Coalition to Reduce Spending simply
bases its findings on the hard data. “SpendingTracker.org automatically
aggregates the new spending contained in each bill, according to official
estimates,”
Coalition to Reduce Spending President Jonathan
Bydlak says. “The Coalition digitizes Congressional Budget Office scores for
every bill affecting spending, cross-referencing them with voting records to
assign every Member of Congress an individual score.”
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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