A Way Out of the Wilderness
By Jeff Flake
Wednesday, November 5, 2008; A23

Well, we Republicans have just made history. Not the type of history we wanted to make, mind you, but history nonetheless. Not only did we lose the White House but, after losing our House and Senate majorities in 2006, we followed it up last night with even steeper losses in Congress.

In January, Democrats will enjoy lopsided congressional ratios not seen since the 1970s. Let's face it: We Republicans are now, by any reasonable measurement, deep in the political wilderness.

The temptation for Republican members of Congress today will be to assume the role of the post-Watergate Republicans of 1974 and accept minority status as a permanent condition. Indeed, the terrain is more difficult for us now than it was in 1992. Then, Republicanism was still largely defined by the Reagan years. Today the party is defined in the public mind by the Bush presidency. We've got a steep hill to climb.

Much of the backroom maneuvering and media speculation in the coming weeks will focus on identifying new standard-bearers for the party. This is important, and after a second straight drubbing, the House Republican leadership should be replaced. But the far more critical task is determining what standard these new leaders will bear.

I suggest that we return to first principles. At the top of that list has to be a recommitment to limited government. After eight years of profligate spending and soaring deficits, voters can be forgiven for not knowing that limited government has long been the first article of faith for Republicans.

Of course, it's not the level of spending that gets the most attention; it's the manner in which the spending is allocated. The proliferation of earmarks is largely a product of the Gingrich-DeLay years, and it's no surprise that some of the most ardent practitioners were earmarked by the voters for retirement yesterday. Few Americans will take seriously Republican speeches on limited government if we Republicans can't wean ourselves from this insidious practice. But if we can go clean, it will offer a stark contrast to the Democrats, who, after two years in training, already have their own earmark favor factory running at full tilt.

Second, we need to recommit to our belief in economic freedom. Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" may be on the discount rack this year, but the free market is still the most efficient means to allocate capital and human resources in an economy, and Americans know it. Now that we've inserted government deeply into the private sector by bailing out banks and businesses, the temptation will be for government to overstay its welcome and force the distribution of resources to serve political ends. Substituting political for economic incentives is not the recipe for economic recovery.

Most House Republicans opposed the recent bailout and will be in a strong position to promote economic freedom over central planning as the Obama administration stumbles from industry to industry trying to determine which is small enough to be allowed to fail and which is not. Since timetables will be in vogue, perhaps Republicans could even insist on a timetable for getting the government out of the private sector.

Lott was known as one of the "Princes of Pork" while he was in Congress for his ability to bring home the bacon to Mississippi and he said that also caused some friction with McCain.

"John used to harass me because I would get earmarks -- or pork barrel projects -- in Mississippi," he said. "And I would say, 'Well, yes, John, I'm a senator from Mississippi and we're the poorest state in the nation.'

"But we're not anymore, that pork paid off."

Then Lott made a couple of admissions I found startling.

"But you know what, in my heart I knew he was right," he said of his pork barrel ways. That's no way to do business, we shouldn't be doing all that earmarking -- it got completely out of control.

"It got out of control with Republicans and that's why we are being punished a little bit," he added. "Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas...

"But that was an aberration, that's not who we really are."

It is, however, an aberration from which Democrats across the nation, from the top of the ticket on down, are counting to make hay this election cycle.

Guerrilla House or Great Leadership? Yesterday, Members of the US House GOP defied Speaker Nancy Pelosi - even after she turned the lights off while Chief Deputy (Minority) Whip Eric Cantor, R-VA, was speaking. Congressman Cantor called in to discuss the Economic Crisis in America - and the American Energy Plan.

OC Group Trying to Reverse GOP's California Fortunes

Former state GOP Chairman Duf Sundheim leaned on several big-money guys in OC to launch "California Republicans Aligned for Tomorrow." The group plans to set aside ideology and focus on finding good, electable candidates for statewide office. One name that has come up for governor: Meg Whitman, former chief executive officer of eBay. After all, the GOP has won just four of the 24 statewide races held since 1998.

Read the complete story on the Sundheim's group, whose Orange County members include George Argyros, William Lyon, Michael Hayde, and Larry Dodge.

Local GOP donors at core of new party strategy
Wealthy Republicans set aside ideology and focus on finding candidates who can win.
By MARTIN WISCKOL and RONALD CAMPBELL
The Orange County Register

When former state GOP Chairman Duf Sundheim decided to launch an unusual plan to get Republicans elected in California, he turned to big money men in Orange County.

He rallied together nine donors at $100,000 each. Six are from Orange County, including the New Majority political action committee and four of the New Majority's key members.

Why did the Palo Alto lawyer lean so heavily on the Orange County-based New Majority?

"They tend to see things as they are and say, 'Why not try something different,' " said Sundheim, chairman of the state party from 2003 to 2007. "They are creative and they get things done."

Exhibit No. 1 might be Arnold Schwarzenegger. The New Majority lent critical early backing to Schwarzenegger's campaign. Despite criticism from grassroots Republicans that the new governor was not a GOP purist, Sundheim stuck by Schwarzenegger throughout his term as state chairman.

But Schwarzenegger was a rare win for Republicans in this heavily blue state.

The GOP has won just four of the 24 statewide elections since 1998. Sundheim said the genesis of his new group came in October 2006, when he was trying to raise money for lieutenant governor candidate Tom McClintock and secretary of state candidate Bruce McPherson. He says surprisingly few potential donors even knew the two were running. Both lost.

"In the future, I want to make sure people like this have the money and resources to get the ball over the line," said Sundheim, who started organizing the group last year.

Sundheim emphasized that the group - California Republicans Aligned for Tomorrow or CRAFT - does not have an ideological agenda other than to elect Republicans.

The New Majority is natural fit for such an effort. The group has focused on being a voice of moderation in the party, emphasizing diversity and practicality. It downplays social issues like abortion and gun-control, which can energize the GOP base but scare off middle-of-the road voters.

Sundheim said his group will not be making donations to candidates, nor will it be running independent expenditure campaigns. Rather, it will be talking to potential candidates, and encouraging those it thinks have a chance. It will pay for surveys and focus groups. It will make sure potential candidates know where to turn for help in terms of consultants and fundraisers. It will sponsor candidate seminars, and take other steps to make sure strong candidates know what they're doing.

Prevent Earmarks in a Competitive Grant Program
Support the Flake Amendment to H.R. 1338, The Paycheck Fairness Act
 
Dear Colleague:

Later today, I will be offering a commonsense amendment to H.R. 1338, The Paycheck Fairness Act.  In section five of the legislation, a new grant program is created to carry out programs to train girls and women in negotiating tactics.  My amendment would simply prohibit the earmarking of funds authorized by this bill for the grant program.  Earlier this year, a similar amendment was approved by the House of Representatives during consideration of the Beach Act of 2007 by a vote of 263 to 117 (Roll Call Vote #182, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll182.xml).

The new grant program created in H.R. 1338 is explicitly authorized in the legislation to make grants on a competitive basis to eligible entities.  However, when it comes to earmarking, the message is clear: just because Congress hasn't earmarked an account or a grant program before doesn't mean we won't in the future.  My amendment makes no substantive change to the grant program included in the legislation and is simply offered as a safeguard against future earmarking.

With few opportunit[ies] this session to deal directly with the broken earmarking process, the least Members can do is explicitly prohibit earmarks in programs or accounts that are designed to provide funding on a formula or competitive basis.  I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment.  For further information, please contact MacMillin Slobodien of my staff at x5-2635.
 
Sincerely,
 
Jeff Flake
Member of Congress
 

Taxpayers are shelling out over $17 billion for more than 11,000 Congressional earmarks in FY 2008. One such project is a $1.6 million earmark in this year's defense spending bill. The money is going to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), a program that searches for evidence of life elsewhere in the universe.

That alien pork project is just one example of how elected officials use earmarks to funnel federal tax dollars back to powerful interests in their districts. While politicians and a few of their most well-connected constituents benefit from earmarks, the costs fall on individual taxpayers. Since 1991, Americans have paid over $271 billion for pork projects.

In this new Reason.tv video, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) - who is known as  the Senate's "Dr. No" for his aggressive opposition to earmarks - explains how taxpayers are being fleeced by Washington's insatiable appetite for pork.

• He proposed a Constitutional amendment that would prohibit federal spending from growing faster than the economy. In a letter co-signed by Rep. John Campbell and sent earlier this year to his House colleagues, Hensarling warned: "The projected growth of federal spending is simply unsustainable ... By 2040, taxes would have to double in order to pay for all of the spending that will compound if the federal budget is simply left on automatic pilot--and that's if no more additional spending is created."
  
  
• He's been a staunch opponent of earmarks, taking the pledge to "swear off pork" (that sadly only 39 of the 201 Republican members of Congress have taken) and has supported the one-year moratorium on all Congressional earmarks.  In 2006, Henserling actively opposed a $1.5 billion earmark to Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, stuck in a federal transportation bill, which was seven times larger than Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" and, according to the Heritage Foundation, one  of the largest earmarks in American history.
  
  
• He is a staunch tax fighter. Last year, he introduced the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights," a bill that would limit the growth of government spending, and co-authored the "Taxpayer Choice Act," which would simplify the tax code and make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Influential groups like the Club for Growth, American Conservative Union, and the National Taxpayer Union  have all given Hensarling high marks for his anti-tax voting record.

"Fiscal responsibility is one of our core values. Nobody expects the Democrats to be fiscally responsible. But if we're not fiscally responsible, I don't know how we ever get back into the majority."

Why are some lessons so difficult to learn?

Here are the key paragraphs... 

... it's time for Republicans to let the sunshine - and the base - back in. For far too long, too many Republican politicians have treated the conservative base like Ross Perot's proverbial crazy aunt in the attic. Certainly, there's no place in either party for unreasoned extremism. But there's likewise no justification for Republican officials' inexplicable tendency to behave as though good, reasonable conservatives are either too unsophisticated to be taken seriously, too foolish to understand when the issues most important to them are being ignored, or too slavishly devoted to the GOP to withhold their votes when politicians haven't gotten the job done.

In short, congressional Republicans need to begin treating the base less like a rampaging beast to be placated, and more like a trusted friend to be consulted. Too often, party decision-making has a cliquish element reminiscent of an eighth grade cheerleading squad. Would it really hurt anyone for the politicians to turn to the people who fund, electioneer and vote for them most loyally and ask, "What do you think?"? Seeking input about the candidates for the party's new leaders would be a great way to start the conversation. Communication and transparency are key - and given the advent of talk radio and the blogosphere, easily accomplished. It hasn't been happening, and it's time for it to start.

There's no doubt that challenges come with defeat - but there are also new opportunities. It's time for congressional Republicans to close the book on Election Night '06 and resolve that, by November of 2008, theirs will once again be the party that Americans trust with their pocketbooks, their values - and, in an era of Islamofascist terrorism, with their lives.

The whole article can be read here.

Earmarks Persist in Spending Bills for 2009
June 27, 2008
By RON NIXON

WASHINGTON -- Despite a pledge by Congressional leaders to reduce pork-barrel projects, new information shows that both the number and amount of earmarks have increased in several spending bills now making their way through Congress.

The amount of the earmarks in the House version of the labor, health and human services appropriations bill for the 2009 fiscal year, for example, has jumped to $618.8 million from $277.9 million compared with the bill in 2008, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington.

In the Interior Department spending bill, earmarks increased to $134.9 million from $111 million from last year. Those amounts might change when the Appropriations Committee approves those bills. A spokeswoman from the committee said the number and amount of earmarks would be kept at 2008 levels.

A few years ago, the Department of Homeland Security bill had no earmarks; the new House bill has more than 100. In all, lawmakers requested 3,796 earmarks worth about $2.7 billion in seven spending bills.

The debate over earmarks has heated up in recent years after they figured into several Congressional scandals.

President Bush has threatened to veto spending bills if the number and cost of earmarks were not cut in half. Mr. Bush said that earmarks were wasteful and that the projects they financed typically lacked transparency and oversight.

The number of earmarks did decline last year after lawmakers, under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, mandated that members publicly disclose their financing requests.

"But these increases we are seeing clearly sets back any steps toward reform," said Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste. "We're back to where we were before."

Supporters of the practice say Congress has the right to appropriate financing to organizations and programs that agencies might otherwise overlook. But Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona and a longtime critic of earmarks, said the budget process had become a spoils system.

"It's become a way for lawmakers to award the lobbyists and others who give to their campaigns," Mr. Flake said.

House Democrats lead the way in earmark requests worth billions of dollars in the seven bills for which information is available, according to a review of the data by The New York Times.

Representative Peter J. Visclosky, Democrat of Indiana and chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, requested more than $38 million in earmarks in the seven bills, including $850,000 for programs at a Y.M.C.A. in Gary, Ind.

Still oblivious to the source of our discontent, a number of free-spending Republicans recently rushed to meet House GOP leader John Boehner, urging him not to back an earmark reform proposal from the Republican Study Committee. The idea they fought so mightily against? A ban on earmark requests from Republican members of Congress for one year.

The porkers' struggle is typified by Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia--sponsor or co-sponsor of $83MM in earmarks in last year's budget alone--who, amazingly, defended earmarks as "being entrepreneurial about bringing something home."

In response to us on that remark, former Speaker Newt Gingrich scathingly replied, "There's nothing entrepreneurial about the Appropriations Committee spending other people's money."

Alas, bold GOP leadership on earmark reform is still nearly absent in Washington.  Michigan's Thad McCotter highlights this by arguing the futility of fighting for earmark reform, saying members of the House can't lead on the issue because, "...we are not the field marshals, we are the foot soldiers."

Thank goodness Newt Gingrich suffered no such humility in 1994.

That's the view expressed in the Lincoln Club paper signed by Rich Wagner, the group's president, and Chip Hanlon, a board member. It deplores the refusal by party leaders to support a one-year moratorium on earmarks, whose 285 percent growth when Congress was under Republican control is "the perfect symbol of the GOP-led profligacy that drives us crazy still." Earmarks "epitomize the fiscal recklessness that led to Republicans becoming a minority in 2006. . . . It's no wonder the Republican leadership continued to fail on . . . entitlement reform and a reduction in federal spending."

The Lincoln Club blasts conservative Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, whose personal earmarks totaled $83 million last year, for defending his pork as "being entrepreneurial about bringing something home." It also assails conservative Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, a member of the leadership who has opposed earmark reform and voted on the floor against only one earmark. With his annual earmarks totaling $22.5 million, McCotter declared a year ago, "I will not unilaterally disarm my donor state."

On June 25, however, McCotter apparently felt enough heat to disarm unilaterally, with a surprise announcement that he had requested no earmarks this year. It may be too late for the 42-year-old third-termer, threatened with losing his House Republican Policy Committee chairmanship after only two years if the Lincoln Club of Orange County gets its clean sweep.

"We urge other Republican donor groups to reinforce this important beginning," read the club's ultimatum. It went on: "It is not credible to ask the American people to return Republicans to the majority when all we offer them is the same group of leaders and policies they so recently rejected."

The statement asserts that these leaders "have no idea what we say when we get together" and are "still oblivious to the source of our discontent." Now, if these contributors have their way, it is too late for the leaders, at least in the House. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who began his campaign for re-election in Kentucky by bragging about his earmarks for the state, probably has more to worry about from his Democratic election foe than insurgent Republican senators. But House Minority Leader John Boehner, who sponsors no earmarks himself but has not backed reform, faces an all-too-serious challenge.