By Byron York
Chief political correspondent
Since we’re talking about trillions of dollars these days, here’s something from the department of little-known facts. When Congress passed the first-ever trillion dollar budget in 1987, the vote in the Senate was mostly along party lines — with the exception of three Republican moderates from the Northeast who crossed party lines to support the spending. Back then, that meant Weicker of Connecticut, Chafee of Rhode Island, and Stafford of Vermont. Of course, unlike today, Democrats also lost three of their own on the budget: Shelby of Alabama (later to become a Republican), Heflin of Alabama, and Proxmire of Wisconsin. Today, the phenomenon among Republicans remains much the same, while the conservative Southern Democrats, along with Proxmire, are gone.
