Search Results for ‘budget committee’
In his column in today’s Register, David Yepsen sees Tom Vilsack’s departure as a bad sign for the caucuses. Now the first primary is not Iowa but the invisible primary of fundraising. Now a candidate needs to raise a lot of money to compete and if they can’t, they will be forced to drop out. Yepsen sees a scenario where “by Labor Day, there may be only three or four viable candidates in each party.” This is all baseless fearmongering.
First, there’s a long precedent of candidates dropping out early because they can’t raise money. If David Yepsen wants some examples, from 2000 alone, I’m sure that Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole could have told Yepsen that, if not a couple of others. But Vilsack’s the only candidate, at least on the Democratic side who won’t be able to raise money. Of the three second tier candidates remaining, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson all will have ample financial resources. Both Biden and Dodd are Senate Committee Chairs and Richardson is the former Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. All three are national political figures to a much greater extent than Tom Vilsack and should be able to raise considerable amounts of money. They all should have more than enough money in the bank to be competitive into 2008. (Provided, of course, that they do a better job budgeting than Vilsack did.) Yepsen is falling into the common tendency among columnists to draw as grand conclusions as possible from events. Vilsack’s dropping out is not indictative in and of itself of some major new trend. He just couldn’t cover his payroll, and one should be careful drawing larger conclusions than that.
February 27th, 2007
At an appearance in Des Moines yesterday, Jeff Lamberti said that he would’ve opposed earmarking money for the $50 million indoor rainforest project that is in the works for Iowa. Now one might assume that he is trying to draw out the differences between himself and his opponent, incumbent Leonard Boswell, as politicians normally do when campaigning for election. But Boswell voted against the appropriation of those funds. The person responsible is Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who publicly announced that he had set aside the funds for the project. So Lamberti is criticizing a member of his own party in order to say that he would’ve done what his opponent did?
Yes, but Lamberti is still trying to use this as an avenue to criticize Boswell for being fiscally irresponsible. Here is what Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, speaking at the same event, had to say about it:
“Leonard Boswell (has) a record of not being in favor of reducing federal pork, and obviously … you have a record of being very much in favor of reducing that,” he said.
Wait, I’m sorry, that statement is incomprehensible. I think what Lamberti and Mehlman are trying to say is that Boswell, a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, is irresponsibly sending money to his home state to fund frivolous projects—such as freeway repairs on I-235.
Not only has Lamberti been complaining about repaving the roads, but he also looks for other creative ways to make it look like Boswell is spending too much money, such as attack ads featuring “false and misleading claims.” This might’ve worked if they weren’t so blatantly inaccurate that the television stations refused to play them.
It’s baffling that these guys are still trying to paint Boswell as fiscally irresponsible when he has a strong record of balancing state and federal budgets–something the Republicans have trouble doing.
September 22nd, 2006
The Washington Post reports that the National Republican Congressional Committee is planning to spend 90% of its advertising budget on “what officials describe as negative ads.” The article explains that Republicans’ only hope of shifting attention away from pesky little issues like Iraq is to wage personal attacks on Democrats. Or as Representative Tom Cole, Grinnell class of ‘71, puts it, “When you run in an adverse political environment, you try to localize and personalize the race as much as you can.” Actually, Cole doesn’t even try to spin the Republicans’ nasty program:
In a memo released last week, Cole, who is running to succeed Reynolds at the NRCC, expanded on that strategy. The memo recommended that vulnerable incumbents spend $20,000 on a research “package” to find damaging material about challengers and urged that they “define your opponent immediately and unrelentingly.”
You might also remember Cole from 2004, when he gave a speech including the gem: “I promise you this. If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election. It’s that simple. It will be interpreted that way by enemies of the United States around the world.” He went on to add, “What do you think Hitler would have thought if Roosevelt would’ve lost the election in 1944? He would not have thought American resolve was strengthening. What would the confederacy have thought if Lincoln would have lost the election of 1860?”
No one’s going to fall for that kind of mumbo jumbo this year, Tom. In the words of an alum I much prefer to you, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
September 11th, 2006
I don’t know how many of you are on Jim Nussle’s email list, but yesterday’s edition nearly put me into a coma—its noxious photos, mind numbing stories of lemonade stands and lunches, and exceptional ability to kill the interesting somehow combine the worst aspects of a PowerPoint presentation with granny’s grand canyon slide show. In short—it is an unholy alliance between boredom and idiocy.
Of course, it does provide a few opportunities for fun.
“Jim’s Journal,” as it’s called, tells us that Jim is doing what every other self-respecting candidate in the state does this time of year—he’s spending significant time at the internationally-acclaimed Iowa State fair. Of course, Jim has something else in common with too many politicians—wherever he is, he seems to be at the same tricks.
Indeed, true to form, Jim did what he does best. He served up pork.
Heck, Jim’s been doing it for years.
As House Budget Chairman he presided over the evaporation (er, trickledown?) of hundreds of billions of dollars. Where’d it all go? Sure, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans played a huge part, as did Halliburton contracts. But another often overlooked culprit was the astronomical growth in pork barrel spending that picked up speed in the early 90’s and only accelerated under Nussle’s tenure as HBC.
Now, one can’t blame all pork on Nussle—Congress is stuffed with chronic earmarkers like a pig with an apple down its throat—but when Jim first got to the hill in 1991, spending on pet project earmarks totaled 3.1 billion dollars. In 2006, that number was 29.3 billion dollars. In his five years as House Budget Chairman, pork barrel spending went up in every one. In 2001, when he took control of the Committee, earmarks hovered around 7,000. By 2005, that number had nearly doubled.
And earmarks under the reign of king Nussle have been especially egregious. According to the conservative Citizens Against Government Waste, this year’s budget includes:
$13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.
Thankfully, Nussle’s reign in the House is over. Here’s to making sure we don’t let him do for Iowa what he did in Congress. Iowans—let’s not be what we eat.
P.S. Do us a favor Jim—keep the “journal” to yourself. Diaries are self-indulgent.
August 12th, 2006
Nussle is often mentioned in the context of large sums of money, but this time we’re not talking about the unprecedented national deficit. The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported today that Nussle has made the first TV ad buy of the 2006 gubernatorial election:
The 30-second ads tout his agenda and his role as chairman of the House Budget Committee. The commercials, scheduled to begin airing this weekend, will try to show Nussle as “a leader in the fight to control spending and clean up the House Ethics scandal.”
Campaign aides said the commercials will run on both cable and broadcast stations statewide. The cost of the ads is $500,000.
Well, that’s an interesting angle for these ads to play. Maybe Nussle’s staff is making these claims about Nussle’s supposed success in controlling spending (something he has actually failed miserably at) on TV at a time when they know that (1) Democrats are too focused on each other to put many resources towards fighting this and (2) the Democratic candidates just can’t afford this widespread a TV buy this early in the year. We need to make sure this story doesn’t go away, so here are the facts:
Before Nussle (according to the CBO in 2000): $236 Billion Surplus
After Nussle (according to the CBO in 2004): $412 Billion Deficit
It’s that simple. Nussle sucked at managing the budget.
April 21st, 2006
Today’s Register has it that the wildly popular commander-in-grief is coming to Iowa to campaign for gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle. Nussle, best known for helping make a projected 5.3 trillion dollar surplus into a projected 1.3 trillion dollar deficit as Chairman of the House Budget Committee (sure beats pulling a rabbit out of a hat), will be teaming up with Bush to laud their distinguished record together.
Has Nussle looked at a poll lately? Maybe he thinks this will energize his base, but I can’t see how reminding Iowans of his connection to a President this deep in the lurch can help much with the all important Iowa swing voter. Of course, we all know that Bush can bring in the dough, and Nussle might as well try to extract everything he can out of the anemic President before he hits Nixon territory. Let’s not forget, Nussle does need the money—what else is he going to do, run on his record?
I can’t help but think this is the kind of news that makes Chet Culver salivate. Sorry for that image.
Just one more question: is Sheehan showing up?
March 20th, 2006
