GOP Spenders Think Voters Dismiss Deficits

For two days they marched past the huge marble fountain and upstairs to the terra-cotta and creamy-gold splendor of the grand ballroom at the historic Peabody Hotel in Memphis. There, flanked by the flags of more than two dozen states, four U.S. senators who hope to carry the Republican banner in the 2008 presidential election pledged allegiance to one of the GOP’s most revered principles: fiscal responsibility -- never spend taxpayers’ money you don’t have.

Less than a week later, the Senate’s Republican majority overwhelmingly approved billions of dollars in deficit spending. Despite outcry from conservative groups that helped build the GOP majorities in both houses of Congress, the Republican spenders were undeterred, for one reason:

They’re convinced that voters now care less about big deficits than they do about the things that increased federal spending will buy.

“Senators are betting that pandering to the public with billions in election-year promises will pay off more than they lose by cutting the fiscal conservatives in their own party off at the knees,” said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

That political calculation was behind congressional Republicans’ support for the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement in 2003. And it drove Thursday’s votes to raise the debt ceiling and approve more deficit spending.

There is another reason that many congressional Republicans have drawn back from fiscal discipline: Two other elements in the conservative credo, support for greater spending on national security and determination to cut taxes, have left budget makers with little room to maneuver, and so significant budget cuts have become hard to make.

Some Republicans warned that the GOP could pay a heavy price for yielding to spending pressures.

Former Rep. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who now heads the free-market-oriented Club for Growth, warned that “Republican voters are going to ask themselves, ‘Why bother having Republicans in office?’ ” Senate Republicans have shown “absolutely no semblance of discipline on spending,” said Toomey, adding that they have also failed to extend President Bush’s expiring tax cuts.

“If they can’t do either taxes or spending right, how do they expect Republicans to turn out in the fall to reelect Republican majorities?” Toomey said. “I think they’re in ... for a very rude awakening in November.”

Democrats, long vilified by opponents as the tax-and-spend party, think they can turn the tables by calling the Republicans the party of borrow and spend. The federal budget, in surplus when Bush took office in 2001, immediately ran deficits that assumed record proportions.

Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.) told the House on Wednesday that he grew up with three principles: “Live within your means, pay your debts and invest in the future.

“This government under this leadership is doing none of those,” he said.

He noted that the House approved a $92-billion emergency spending bill Thursday that provided $68 billion for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and $19 billion for communities struck by Hurricane Katrina. The bill passed handily, 348 to 71, with only 19 Republicans joining 52 Democrats in opposition.

The Senate meanwhile added $16 billion for a host of domestic programs, including health, education and heating assistance for the poor, to the $2.8-trillion budget for fiscal year 2007 that its Budget Committee had recommended. The budget passed on a scant 51 to 49 vote, with a lone Democrat -- Mary Landrieu of Louisiana -- joining 50 Republicans to form the majority and five Republicans voting no, mostly to protest the budget’s call for legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

“When it comes to fiscal discipline,” said Executive Director Robert L. Bixby of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group, “the gap between rhetoric and reality on Capitol Hill is as wide as the deficit.”

Spending has grown more in Bush’s five years in office than it did in President Clinton’s eight, even excluding the boom in defense spending under Bush. Altogether, spending rose about 4% a year under Clinton and has risen 9% a year under Bush.

Despite this arithmetic, some Republicans think the Democrats will have a hard time convincing the public that they are the party of spending restraint. “It would be even worse under the Democrats,” said Dick Armey, a former House majority leader from Texas who now is chairman of FreedomWorks, a group advocating lower taxes and less government.

And restraint may have lost some of its political appeal. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in its annual survey in January of what issues weigh on the public, said 36% of conservative Republicans rated the deficit a “top priority” -- well below eduction, jobs, terrorism and illegal immigration.

“The deficit does not have the same resonance that it did through much of the 1990s,” said the Pew center’s Carroll Doherty.

Paying homage to fiscal responsibility is apparently still mandatory for Republican politicians who aspire to higher office, however.

Among those who vowed to curb spending last weekend when they addressed a combined meeting of the Southern and Midwestern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis were four of the party’s leading presidential hopefuls: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Sens. John McCain of Arizona, George Allen of Virginia and Sam Brownback of Kansas.

All four, however, supported the final budget bill.

Some fiscal conservatives in the House were so furious at the absence of spending cuts to offset hurricane relief that they voted against the spending bill despite its defense funding.

“I strongly support our troops,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas). “Successfully fighting the war on terror is our most important national priority. But another national priority is saving our children from a mountain of debt or unconscionable tax increases.”

For other conservative lawmakers, local interests trumped ideology. Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.) issued a statement Friday praising his chamber’s vote, which made room for $235 million more for rural healthcare.

“While it is important to identify and eliminate wasteful and inefficient programs,” Thomas said, “I also believe that we must support policies that work.”

Mike Franc, a former House Republican leadership aide now with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said many Republican lawmakers, “as Ricky Ricardo used to say, have some explaining to do.”

“It’s an uphill battle for many Republicans to explain why, during an era when they control the House, the Senate and the White House, spending has been unleashed as it has,” he said.