The only Republicans to actually cut spending rode the Tea Party wave

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.”

Amash rightly bragged about it Wednesday. To quote philosopher Kid Rock, “It ain’t bragging… if you back it up.”

Massie has bragging rights too, nearly tying Amash in his fiscal hawkishness.

Amash and Massie weren’t the only Republican House members to vote to cut spending on a net level, meaning bills that were actually passed and enacted, in the 115th Congress. Now-retired Reps. Jimmy Duncan, R-Tenn., Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., also made the list.

But that’s it in the House. Reminder: There were 236 Republicans in the majority GOP House last year. Pitiful.

Virtually every Republican promises to cut spending while campaigning. Turns out very few actually do.

Among those few, in the Senate, Rand Paul and Mike Lee were the only two who voted to cut spending on a net level last year.

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 [Disclosure: Bydlak is a personal friend]. “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.”

But as someone who is admittedly partisan toward fiscal hawks who actually mean it, I find it noteworthy that the seven Republicans who were found to actually cut spending last year are aligned in some manner with the small, but vocal and sometimes influential libertarian faction within the Republican Party. It’s almost as if the only Republicans able to withstand the pressures of Washington’s addiction to largesse are those who had firm principles rooted in liberty and the Constitution before they even got to the swamp.

Those who still care about fiscal responsibility should hope the number of liberty Republicans grows. Thanks to the Coalition to Reduce Spending, there now exists a formidable tool for anyone who claims to be for smaller government to actually prove it.

Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.