Congressman John Campbell's Blog - Green Eyeshade Blog

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Posted by: John Campbell at 11:11 AM

Last week, the House Republican Steering Committee decided against naming Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to the Appropriation committee. I am very disappointed to see this decision. If we are ever going to control spending in Washington, we will need to change the culture of the Appropriations Committee. Members who request to be on the Appropriations Committee usually do so because they want to spend money and that breeds a culture of spending and spenders. For example, I never wanted to be on that committee because I don't want to spend money. Neither does Jeff Flake. He wants to save money, not spend it. Jeff would probably not have been able to change much all by himself even if he had gotten the appointment. But he would have been a canary in the earmark mine shaft and it would have been a start. We would have begun the process of changing that culture to one that looks for spending to eliminate rather than earmarks to hand out.

Next year, there will be several Republican vacancies on the Appropriations Committee because of retirements. Apparently, Republican Conference leadership is not yet ready to fully embrace fiscal conservatism, the elimination of earmarks and lower spending. They will have another opportunity to change the culture in the next Congress. Maybe they will be ready then.

I hope so.

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CincyGuy writes:	Friday, February, 22, 2008 5:01 PM
Fiscal Sanity - A Potent Dem Issue
Sorry, `pubs, it's just a fact. Spending and appropriations under the Republicans for the last several years has been a complete disaster. Please don't talk about how it would be worse under Democratic leadership because it's not only a negative argument but a physical impossibility. With 3 billion a week going to Iraq, the prescription drug sop to to big pharma and on and on, what are the specific, doable ideas from the Con side that we can conceivably implement in the near future? Please spare the acid and flames, socialist-commie blah, blah, blah. We're in this together. We've made this bed and we're laying in it. It's terrible that Flake didn't get that gig. He's got a good head and is not a partisan at all.
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lilly writes:	Friday, February, 22, 2008 5:02 PM
Money
While you are counting money, count the billions we spend every MONTH in Iraq then count what we could do with just one month's worth of that money here at home. And The Ancient Mariner says it's OK with him (his exact words) if we stay in Iraq for a hundred years.
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Redlac writes:	Friday, February, 22, 2008 5:57 PM
Coburn's Take on Spending
The following open letter was written to Santorum by Coburn of Oklahoma in the Senate. I read Rick Santorum's column "The conservative jury is still out on backing McCain" (Inquirer, Feb. 14) with great interest. I respect my conservative friends who don't share my enthusiasm about Arizona Sen. John McCain. Yet, I'm troubled that many critics are focusing on the specks of dust in McCain's eye while ignoring the plank in their own eye. The plank in the eye of some self-appointed conservative jurists, particularly those from former Republican leadership ranks, is this: Under their leadership, Republicans grew the government faster than the Democrats we replaced. Under their leadership, Republicans attempted to secure a governing majority through the corrupting practice of earmarking. Under their leadership, Republicans passed the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson, passing on more than $9 trillion in new debt to the next generation so we could win the 2004 election. McCain fought against all of those trends while many so-called conservatives were marching our party off a Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain isn't perfect. But he is by far the best candidate to tackle what many conservatives believe are the two greatest challenges facing our country - radical Islamic terrorism and a Congress that refuses to correct our unsustainable fiscal course. U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.)
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mr_sparky writes:	Friday, February, 22, 2008 7:00 PM
Hmmmm
Well yes there is a lot of spending on the war in Iraq, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the run away spending on SS, Medicare and Medicaid. Get use to it when these 3 programs take up 3/4 of the federal budget and everybody wants to know why. Yea right like this has not been known for years now!
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tim_cuchullaine writes:	Friday, February, 22, 2008 9:35 PM
Earmarks are gnats
alongside the Federal Reserve's camels; we should not strain at the former at the cost of swallowing the latter. Though red meat for talk radio, earmarks comprise a negligible portion of the annual federal budget. Of greater scandal is the very nature of our monopolized, debt-based, interest bearing monetary system. The Federal Reserve creates money out of nothing to buy Congressional debt from The Treasury. The funds are 100% counterfeit. Classifying Congress' promise to pay (with money confiscated from the U.S. taxpayer, of course) as an asset, The Fed then creates 9 more dollars (as the current reserve ratio is 10%) out of nothing to lend to commercial banks. So if Ben and company "purchase" $1 billion of public debt (with money created at the instant of the transaction), the resultant IOU from the United States becomes an asset on The Fed's books. The Fed then pyramids $9 billion on top of the asset and lends it to Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, etc. The counterfeiting process is repeated at the commercial level. Such artificially cheap money invariably grows at a rate faster than that of productivity, resulting in the debasement of the dollar's purchasing power, the chief symptom of which is ever increasing prices of everything denominated in U.S. dollars. And because all of this inflationary credit must be repaid to The Fed (though debt repudiation must always remain on the table as an option), Congress has a justification for increasing taxes in the future. The more purchasing power we lose today, the more we are taxed tomorrow. Earmarks are child's play; The Federal Reserve Banking System is the dragon that needs slaying.
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ClaireSolt writes:	Saturday, February, 23, 2008 9:39 AM
Iraq Tunnel vision
About 100 B out of 3 Trillion budget is Iraq. Ending Iraq (and it surely will end) won't even balance the budget much less free up for new spending. Those who mention this as a panacea just show how ignorant they are. However, a throuough review top to bottom that eliminmates wasteful and duplicate programs would initiate much needed reform..
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Virginia Patriot writes:	Saturday, February, 23, 2008 10:49 AM
Totalization Treaty With Mexico
Wait until W. signs off on giving 345 billion of our social security dollars to Mexican nationals who have been working illegally in our country. It will bankrupt the system years ahead of current projections.
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Rick writes:	Monday, February, 25, 2008 9:33 AM
Quick edit!
You wrote, "Republican Conference leadership is not yet ready to fully embrace fiscal conservatism," My edit would have read, "Republican Conference leadership is not yet fully ready to embrace fiscal conservatism,"
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Sammy writes:	Monday, February, 25, 2008 10:36 AM
Amnesty Flake
Are you talking about the same Jeff Flake that wants to grant amnesty to untold millions of illegals and send the American taxpayers a bill of at least $2.6 trillion dollars in costs? Does that sound like a fiscal conservative? Whatever conservative bonafides Flake may have earned in other areas, his enthusiastic and unbridled support for amnesty completely overwhelms any claims he can make to being a fiscal conservative.
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About John Campbell

John Campbell is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, and has taken a leadership role in addressing the country's top economic issues. Campbell serves as a member of the Joint Economic Committee, and House Committee on the Budget. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from UCLA and a Master's Degree in Taxation from USC.