By Adam Bitely — House Republicans were given a majority in Congress in the 2010 mid-term elections to fight back against the explosion of government spending. Instead of fighting back, they seem to mostly be rolling over on one of the most important issues that Congress will deal with this decade.
Just as recently as July 18, Republicans were presented with an opportunity to ban spending on a government program that yielded zero results. The National Guard has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on sponsoring professional sports teams and events to help boost recruitment. The result of all this spending is that no one has actually joined. This should have been an easy vote for people who proclaim to be watching out for waste of the taxpayers dollar.
Instead, 156 Republicans stood with 60 Democrats to make sure that NASCAR drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. received nearly $30 million in taxpayer subsidies so that a National Guard logo appears on the back of his race car. Not even Nancy Pelosi supported this absurd waste of taxpayer money!
If that’s not enough to cause concern, perhaps this is. Only 127 of 240 House Republicans signed onto a letter from the Republican Study Committee to call on Congress to defund ObamaCare.
Republicans in the House have been running on opposing Obamacare for the past 2 years. Republicans in the House have been appearing on TV shows, writing OP-ED’s, sending out campaign literature, putting up commercials, all touting that they will bring about the end of ObamaCare if given the chance to govern.
But when it comes time to actually commit to doing the one thing that would actually bring about Obamacare’s demise — defunding it — 113 of them, including some from House leadership, won’t sign a letter saying they will support a complete defunding of Obamacare.
This is a real problem.
Since House Republicans have taken control in January of 2011 they have rolled over on their promise to cut $100 billion in their first year as spending actually increased by $100 billion. After publicly announcing that they were cutting over $30 billion in a Spring 2011 continuing resolution battle, it turned out they only cut a couple hundred million dollars. And the House GOP is currently trying to roll back cuts that are scheduled to occur in 2013 as a result of sequestration.
But that’s not all…
Since the GOP took control of the House, the national debt has increased by over $2 trillion dollars. And they voted for the largest increase to the debt ceiling ever. House Republicans allowed this to happen. In addition, the U.S. lost its AAA credit rating after House Republicans promised this would not happen.
Looking back on the results of the House GOP majority, it’s hard to point to a single instance where they have actively shrunk the size and scope of the Federal government. Instead, all we see are places where they are fighting against cuts.
Voters didn’t elect Republicans to the majority of the House in 2010 so that they could act like the Republicans of the Bush years. If Boehner and company are smart, they will get their acts together and put a stop to the out-of-control spending. Or else they will suffer a similar fate as the Democrats did in 2010.
Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamBitely.
