John Berthoud: Cutting Spending Should be Mission for Congressional Republicans

WASHINGTON - Republican congressional leaders are telling the American public that they got the message of the 2006 election. They claim to understand that they lost their way and insist they want to return to being the party of reform and limited government.

There’s a very easy way for Republican senators and representatives to demonstrate their sincerity: start introducing bills to cut government.

Republicans in Congress were very good at advocating spending cuts when they were last in the minority and during the early years of their congressional majority. But after a couple of years running Congress the interests of many members turned more to perpetuating the Washington machine rather than reforming it and cutting back the parts that don’t work.

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s BillTally system is a database containing all bills introduced in Congress that would increase or decrease spending. Aggregate numbers from the last seven Congresses (as shown in the accompanying chart) clearly show the waning interest of members of Congress in authoring bills to cut government.

Republicans did a great job of driving a spending cut agenda in the years before they took power (the 103rd Congress) and for a brief period after they took power. But they didn’t sustain that for long.

The numbers in the House are most stark. In 1993 and 1994 representatives (mostly Republicans) authored 458 bills to chop back the federal government. A decade later the Republican-controlled 108th Congress (2003 and 2004) produced only one-eighth as many bills to cut spending.

But House members weren’t idle during those two years — instead they were busy introducing a record 1343 bills to grow government. Over in the Senate meanwhile during 2003 and 2004 for every bill authored that would cut the size of government almost 30 spending increase bills were introduced.

In every year the Republicans were in the majority there were of course exceptions. During the 108th Congress Rep. Jeb Hensarling R-Texas authored or coauthored bills that would reduce federal spending by $23 billion.

His colleague Rep. Sue Myrick R-N.C. backed bills that would cut net spending by $43 billion. Hensarling and Myrick both know that — contrary to what then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay tried to claim several years ago — there are still a lot of sensible spending cuts that need to be enacted.

There’s a deep nervousness forming in the ranks of Republicans as they look to the 2008 election. Former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf has counseled the party to find an issue and strongly push it. He advises “What Republicans have to do here in the next year is do something other than complain about the Democrats.”

Limiting government can be that issue. Republicans will no doubt try to claim rhetorically that they have rediscovered their core values and really are the party of limited government. The question of the next 18 months is whether they will put pen to paper and author the bills to do so.