Republicans and Democrats

A good friend was in town recently, and I had him and his family over for dinner. While the majority of our conversation was spent trading news of shared acquaintances and discussing his life as a new father, the conversation did steer to politics once or twice. I had seen and voted for a campaign video he took part in as part of a contest hosted by CNN iReport, so it wasn't exactly a secret who he voted for:



What can I say? Friendship is stronger than politics. Anyways, in our conversation, he defended his vote accordingly - "Even worse than tax and spend Democrats are spend and spend Republicans." And I agree with him. He, perhaps more realistically than me, realized that both parties are more than willing to grow the size of government, but at least Democrats look somewhere, albeit taxes, as a source for funding their expansion of power.

If Republicans do in fact, want to gain credibility as a party committed to fiscal discipline, they would do well to stop working so hard to spend federal money on pork projects. According to Fox News, 3 of the top 5 and 6 of the top 10 earmarking Senators in the $410 Billion spending bill are Republicans:

1) Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. -- $122,804,900
2) Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. -- $114,484,250
3) Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo. -- $85,691,491
4) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- $76,899,425
5) Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. -- $75,908,475
6) Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska -- $74,000,750
7) Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa -- $66,860,000
8) Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. -- $53,133,500
9) Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. -- $51,186,000
10) Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii -- $46,380,205

Theoretically, I would prefer to have parents that don't take out credit cards in my name and run up huge debts, even if they are trying to help. Now, I can't change my parents, and fortunately they haven't done any such foolishness so I wouldn't want to, but in politics, this is as good a metaphor as any. I am simply not willing to yield to the centralization and spending impulses of the Democrats and Republicans in charge, so I will continue to argue, hope, and vote for new authority.