President Obama and the Democrats who run the Senate are primarily responsible for out-of-control federal spending, but there are 13 old bull House Republicans who share the blame. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and his panel’s dozen subcommittee chairmen – aka the “cardinals” – just don’t get it. Their party won a historic victory that brought a GOP majority to the House in 2010, largely on the strength of the Tea Party organizing skills and principled fervor. Huge majorities of the American people have had it with business as usual in the nation’s capital. That’s the key underlying reason why they put Republicans back in charge of the House. Yet little has changed on Capitol Hill, which goes a long way toward explaining the single-digit public approval rating of Congress. Nobody ever said rooting out the corrupt culture of spending in Congress would be easy. But surely voter anger is so obvious that a conscious choice to ignore that anger is needed to make spending decisions like those made recently by the cardinals. Consider the bitter complaints of anonymous cardinals reported earlier this week by the Hill newspaper. After the House approved an agriculture appropriations bill that was within the limits set by the August budget deal, the Senate slapped on billions in new spending, including huge increases for food stamps and disaster relief. Then in a House-Senate conference, the cardinals crafted a “compromise” that kept the Senate changes and even added a provision widening the lending limits of the bankrupt Fannie and Freddie.
When the conference compromise came to the House floor for a final vote, more than 100 GOPers voted against it, including Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Policy Chairman Tom Price of Georgia. The measure passed but only because 165 Democrats supported it. That made the cardinals’ collective blood boil, one of whom told the Hill: “Nobody gives their votes away for free around here. It just strengthens the Democrats in every negotiation going forward. We’ve got some people who need to learn Politics 101.” What that anonymous cardinal calls “Politics 101” is nothing more than the “you vote for my spending project and I’ll vote for yours” mantra of the professional politician that fuels public dissatisfaction with Washington.
The Congressional Budget Office projects another budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion in 2012. The national debt has increased more than $4 trillion since 2009, and will likely exceed $15 trillion sometime next year. Out-of-control federal spending is helping drive what was once the world’s largest, most productive and liberating economy into another recession, or worse. Nothing will change until voters turn the cardinals out to pasture. The most patriotic thing the Tea Party can do in 2012 is recruit quality primary challengers capable of defeating every tone-deaf old bull, then do everything possible to elect them.
