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
What a great tool! We can now see what candidates like Heather Wilson actually did when they were in office and whether they are the conservatives they claim to be or not. According to Heather in her campaign commercials she wants to stop the “run away spending by the Federal Government” yet while she was in office (107th congress) she would have added over 11 billion dollars to the budget. The S-CHIPS health care bill that became the heart of ObamaCare is a bill she introduced and voted twice to override President Bush’s veto. As Senator, she would not repeal ObamaCare. Since both she and Martin Heinrich are big spenders we need to look elsewhere to find a candidate who will really roll back spending not just talk about it.
A post script to my above comments; Heather Wilson in the first session of the 107th Congress introduced bills that would increase spending by 22 billion dollars. During that same period she introduced bills that would decrease spending by exactly zero. In the second session she introduced bills that would increase spending by another 9 billion dollars bringing the total to more than 31 billion dollars. For some reason during that second session she introduced bills that would decrease spending by 20 billion dollars which still left an increase of 11 billion dollars for the 107th congress due to her bills. She may have been positioning herself as a fiscal conservative in her run for the seat being vacated by Dominici. I believe the real Heather Wilson is the one we saw propose bills that would increase spending by 22 billion dollars in the first session of the 107th Congress. She is as big a spender as Martin Heinrich.
Sorry Paul, I disagree with your comment that “Bingaman and Udall would slightly reduce Washington spending”. They just took a more sneaky approach by voting at every opportunity to transfer Senate authority and over site to the executive branch (Obama) who then appointed (without Senate approval) Czars to run wild in executive order spending. Bingaman, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has done more to harm the energy industry in New Mexico than any other person by not standing up for the sensible use of the states resources and not objecting to unreasonable EPA demands. Look what Obama’s Energy Czar has done with the free rein given him by the Senate. Udall has done the same with environmental issues. He abdicated his Senate responsibilities in favor of an executive appointed czar with no legislative over site. Look where the Energy Czar has taken America, how much he has added to the cost of doing business, cost to consumers and how much these out-of-control know nothings have wasted on unworkable solutions just to pay off campaign donations. No Paul, our two senators are into the tax payers for hundreds of billions of dollars.
I’m by no means justifying their records, just reporting what the NTUF report states. It is certainly not a perfect report, but it reflects a different type of analysis of our federal representatives.