Fiscal Irresponsibility

It's good to hear Todd Akin continuing his work to make himself as unelectable as possible, doubling down on the disastrous privatization idea for Medicare and calling for the privatization of Social Security.

As Think Progress ably explains, privatizing Social Security would entail massive new costs to the government to pay for the shift to a new system, while leaving everyone but the very wealthiest seniors more vulnerable and with less of a safety net.

Conservative KFRU radio personality Renee Hulshof, earlier today: "I think if Republicans had been more fiscally conservative when GWB [George W. Bush] was in office, we wouldn't have the tea party cannibalism now." 

No word yet on how the Republican Congressman who represented Missouri's Ninth Congressional District for 100% of the time George W. Bush was in office responds to such speculation.

Tea Party darling Rand Paul on the hypocrisy of candidates like Roy Blunt:

Kentucky Senate hopeful Rand Paul chided fellow Republicans on Sunday evening for contributing to the massive federal budget deficit, candidly telling tea party supporters in his hometown that GOP lawmakers took "the easy way out" by failing to cut spending in the past.

Paul said Democrats share greater blame for rising red ink, but the tea party favorite said Republicans squandered past congressional majorities by presiding amid times of growing federal deficits.

The Missouri Democratic Party has posted a portion of a fascinating radio conversation between Laura Ingraham and Roy Blunt.  The interview was conducted Tuesday before polls had closed, and as you'll hear, Blunt struggled to answer basic questions about his record of irresponsible spending in Washington.

"Why do you think Republicans are revolting?  Why do you think so many Republicans, Republican voters, were in revolt against the Republicans on Capitol Hill if you guys were doing everything you were supposed to be doing?" Ingraham demanded.

Former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen skewers Roy Blunt and his fellow GOP candidates who have rediscovered the ideas of fiscal discipline and balanced budgets now that they've lost power and are campaigning for promotions based on their records. In an introduction to his new Washington Post op-ed on the blog of the American Enterprise Institute, Thiessen describes Blunt as a 2010 candidate "for whom fiscal discipline is not a top priority." And in the Post, Thiessen points out the obvious about Blunt's record in Washington:

Blunt has been a prolific earmarker during his 12 years in Congress. In 2010 alone, he has requested $153 million in earmarks -- prompting Carnahan to swear off all earmarks in a bid to get to the right of Blunt on fiscal issues. Carnahan campaigns as if she were the Tea Party candidate, accusing Blunt of having "become famous for his pork-barrel spending" and calling him a "prodigious porkmeister." This month, Blunt responded with an ad promising he would vote as a fiscal conservative in the Senate: "Irresponsible spending and crippling debt are killing jobs today and our children's future tomorrow. That's wrong and I'll fight to change it."

In a new web video, Roy Blunt asks for help with the House Republicans' "You Cut" campaign.  The idea is that citizens will send their ideas to Congress for what they think should be cut from the federal budget, ignore House Republicans' actual record of irresponsible budgeting, and perhaps believe that past performance is no indicate of future behavior.

But in the video, Blunt makes a rather odd statement about his time in the Congressional Leadership:

Most Missouri families do a lot better job balancing their budget than the federal budget does balancing its budget. I led the fight in 2005 to cut the entitlement programs, the only time we did it in ten years. We got that bill on the President's desk.  But during that fight, Missourians didn't really weigh in saying, "Keep trying to hold the budget down." Let's see what you want to cut...

The next time a House Republican tells your he or she is a fiscal conservative, ask why House Republicans "appear disinterested in cost-cutting, focused more on controversial political wedge issues that can be used in future campaigns."

And ask him or her why "Missouri House leaders have declared the $23.3 billion operating budget sent to Gov. Jay Nixon to be balanced" when "it likely is not."

It's time for a new "Demon Sheep" ad...

John Boehner (R-Ohio), who succeeded Roy Blunt as the House GOP Leader in 2006 when Republicans sought to make a break from the simmering Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff scandals, says "Republicans will accept our fair share of the blame" for deficit spending and irresponsible fiscal policies.  Posted today at The Washington Independent:

The obvious thorn in the side of Republicans — who’ve made a habit of blasting the Democratic majority under President Obama for deficit spending — is that the GOP majority under President Bush never once balanced its annual budgets. As a result, the national debt jumped from $5.7 trillion in 2000, when Bush was elected, to $10 trillion eight years later. The GOP controlled both chambers of Congress for six years of that span, during which time they not only cut taxes in the middle of two wars, but also passed the largest Medicare expansion since the program’s founding — an unfunded prescription drug benefit that former comptroller general David Walker has called “the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.”

On the long list of things Roy Blunt would rather not talk about in 2010, his leadership in passing George Bush's Medicare Part D legislation is probably near the top of the list.  The tactics employed to just get the bill out of the House are disgusting enough, and then there's the fact that Blunt and his fellow GOP leaders didn't even bother trying to pay for the huge expansion in federal spending. 

Unexpectedly, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) spoke this weekend about the fiscal leadership (or lack thereof) from Bush, Tom Delay, Blunt and the rest of the gang.

It's a Tuesday, which means it's a great day for a Republican to call for sweeping tax cuts. Ed Martin takes his turn today:

If a one-time $600 tax break per person boosted economic growth over 3% – during a recession! — just imagine what our economy would do if Washington enacted significant, permanent tax reductions!

Ironically, the Martin campaign assigned the tag "fiscal responsibility" to today's call for decidedly irresponsible cuts.

Until Martin outlines all of the programs and services he's willing to cut to offset a "significant, permanent" loss of revenue, he should probably refrain any chest beating about balanced budgets or federal deficits.