Number crunching by the NTU

It’s a long report, but according to the National Taxpayers Union this Congress (or at least the Republican side) is beginning to listen to the clamor for less government.

The “BillTally” study done annually by the group shows this Congress may have slowed down a trend insofar as budget cutting bills are concerned, but we’re still nowhere near the small government prowess shown by the 104th Congress. (That was the Newt Gingrich/Contract With America class of 1994.)

Two of their findings were most intriguing given the rise of “Blue Dog” Democrats like Frank Kratovil and the schism between RINO’s and conservatives in the GOP.

• Members of the Republican Study Committee and the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, two of the self-identified “fiscally conservative” caucuses in the House, compiled lower net spending agendas than other Members of Congress in their respective parties.
• Although the average House Republican was a net cutter, the typical member of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which claims to be composed of “fiscally conservative deficit hawks,” compiled an average net agenda to increase spending by $40.6 billion.

While the first bullet point is reflected in the study, this is all relative: an average Blue Dog is still much more free with other people’s money than the most moderate of Republicans. Just to give readers an idea of the mindset of the Republican Main Street Partnership: Wayne Gilchrest was a member of that group, which is the home of most of the more centrist members of the party. Frank Kratovil and Wayne Gilchrest are fairly similar ideological clones with the exception of who they’d vote for as Speaker of the House (and Gilchrest said recently he would have voted for Obamacare.)

Unfortunately, the study doesn’t specifically break down particular legislators to see just who would cut the most  (yes it does – see the comment by the study author in the comments section;) then again, legislation is a complex process anyway and sponsoring a bill may or may not lead to the desired result – many a bill which began as one idea had a number of other unrelated things piggybacked onto it (such as Obamacare dealing with student loans.) But as a whole we can get some better idea of which party is the fiscally conservative one at the moment while reminding ourselves we need to keep a better eye on them should they regain power.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael