What if our Reps. and Senators passed every bill they introduced?
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation has a unique tool that measures the fiscal impact of each bill introduced. They then cross-reference those bill costs with each representative and senator in Washington to create a report they call “BillTally.” The idea is to find out how much bigger or smaller the federal government would be if each elected official saw every bill they introduced become law immediately.
Check out the for New Mexico’s federal officials report here. Obviously, voting records are of primary importance in analyzing where politicians actually line up on issues of big or small government, but according to the NTUF report, Steve Pearce is the biggest cutter at $82 billion while Ben Lujan who has the most expensive agenda would increase spending by more than $44 billion.
Surprisingly enough, Sens. Bingaman and Udall would slightly reduce Washington spending, but Martin Heinrich would further increase the size of the already-bloated federal budget. The report from NTUF allows users to go back to see the historical spending agendas of their elected officials. The noteworthy thing is not that most liberal politicians want to increase the size of government, but just how aggressive Ben Ray Lujan is relative to his fellow Democrats in New Mexico. Remember, the federal government has already doubled in size since the end of the Clinton Administration from $1.8 trillion to $3.7 trillion. Lujan wants an additional $1.2 trillion in annual spending