Reeling from a series of scandals, congressional Republicans are in danger. Nearly twelve years since Newt Gingrich led the Republican Revolution that swept the GOP into control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years, the party of Reagan seems to have lost is way, but the wake of the scandals has left House Republicans with a golden opportunity to return to its first love, limited government.
In response to the haughty, free-spending ways of the Democratic majority, the American people handed the keys of the Congress over to the GOP, which promised less government and more freedom. As the visionaries of the Republican Revolution, including Gingrich and Dick Armey, departed, the Republican leadership became more concerned with maintaining power than enacting good public policy.
Since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, the size of government has mushroomed as total federal spending has grown by 33 percent, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Pork barrel spending didn’t end with a Republican majority. In time, they learned how to spend taxpayer money more quickly and more efficiently than their Democratic predecessors. Since 1996, the number of annual pork projects in appropriations bills has skyrocketed from 958 to 13,999, according to the Heritage Foundation, now costing the taxpayers $27 billion annually.
The Republicans’ favorite method of spending taxpayer money on pork is earmarks. In the past, lawmakers would fund government programs and then allow federal and state agencies to decide who received the money after a competitive application process or by formula. With earmarks, Congress stipulates in the legislation who will receive government grants by “earmarking” money to specific recipients. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, Congress used nearly 14,000 earmarks in 2005 as compared to only 1,439 in 1995 when the GOP received the reigns of Congress.
Earmarking and uncontrolled spending has invited congressional corruption. Earmarking allows members of congress to anonymously insert spending provisions into bills and direct them to their district, favorite lobbyist or preferred corporation.
Unsurprisingly, the number of people seeking to exert influence over Congress has exploded. From 2000 through 2004, the number of appropriations lobbyists surged from 1,865 to 3,523.
Now the Republican Congress finds itself at a crossroads. A series of scandals has resulted in the resignation of the majority leader and a committee chairman and jail time for a congressman. The cloud of impending investigations still hangs over Capitol Hill, and soon every member of the House will face the wrath of the electorate.
It is time for a clean sweep of GOP leadership, beginning with the election of a new majority leader, scheduled for Feb. 2. Three members are seeking the position: Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boehner (R-Ohio) and John Shadegg (R-Ariz.). Shadegg is the only candidate who is free from the taint of scandal and has held steady to the conservative principles that made him a key member of the class of 1994.
All three have conservative voting records: Shadegg has a lifetime 98 rating from the American Conservative Union while Blunt and Boehner both scored a 94.
But there is a huge difference when it comes to wasteful spending. The Citizens Against Government Waste House rank Shadegg as the third best of 436 representatives, while Boehner is 91 and Blunt is 136.
“We made two promises back in 1994,” Shadegg told Human Events. “One was to shrink the size of the government – make it smaller, tax less, spend less, regulate less, expand individual responsibility and individual freedom and have a strong national defense, but we also promised to clean up government. I think we have fallen short on both counts. We have not shrunk government. Indeed, we are expanding it at a breakneck speed that simply cannot be defended. We have also not cleaned it up. The most telling blow against us right now is that it appears that we did not change Washington, Washington changed us.”
It is time for the fiscal conservatives in Congress to stand and be counted. A vote for Blunt or Boehner is a vote for the status quo, big government and unbridled spending. A vote for Shadegg is a vote for a return to the principles that originally put the Republicans in power and the principles that can save them from losing that power.
“To fully regain their confidence – and to retain and grow the Republican majority – we need to make a clean break with the past and return to our ideals,” Shadegg wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. “The party of Ronald Reagan exists not to expand government, but to protect the American people from government’s excesses.”
 
Jason is a second year law student. Contact him at [email protected]