Two Lonely Men
A comprehensive analysis of spending votes in Congress, conducted by the
National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF), has found that only TWO House
members (and NO Senators) voted on enough cuts in 1999 to actually reduce
the overall federal budget.
Those two lonely House members were Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin,
and Ron Paul, R-Texas (the only libertarian in Congress).
NTUF analyzed the 135 Senate and 150 House votes cast during the 106th
Congress that raised or lowered federal spending by $1 million or more.
Among NTUF's other findings:
- The average House member supported spending hikes of $90.6 billion per year.
- The average Senator supported an increase of $110.1 billion per year.
- Over the past three years, the Republican-led Congress has increased
Clinton's spending requests by a total of $27.7 billion.
"Critics call 1999 the year of the 'do-nothing' Congress," said NTUF
analyst Jeff Dircksen. "But lawmakers did find the time to break spending
caps, spend the entire on-budget surplus, and develop gimmicks to hide the
fact that they tapped the Social Security surplus."
(Sources: NTUF; USA Today editorial, 2/7/2000)
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