Somebody needs to add both of the Palins to this team picture.
Posted on 03/09/2012 2:33:24 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
You can’t read.
Santorum most angered conservatives with his backing of the expensive 2003 Medicare prescription-drug program, which is expected to cost about $68 billion this year alone. Santorum told CNN last year that his Medicare vote was a mistake, because the program wasn’t paid for.
His vote for the 2005 highway bill — a $284 billion measure that was loaded with earmarks, including the infamous Alaska “Bridge to Nowhere” — also outraged conservatives.
Santorum has been a consistent supporter of earmarks, the local projects that members of Congress insert into legislation. Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks earmarks, estimates that in Santorum’s 12 years in the Senate and four in the House of Representatives, he got at least $1 billion in projects.
“He’s not in the pantheon of great earmarkers, but he certainly played the game,” said Steve Ellis, the group’s vice president.
In addition, Santorum voted many times to raise the federal debt ceiling and for Amtrak funds.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/14/v-print/138888/why-do-tea-partiers-flock-to-santorum.html
Santorum appears to have voted for every “emergency supplemental” spending bill sought by the Bush administration, adding tens of billions to the deficit. He also opposed repeated efforts to reimpose the “pay-go” rules that were designed to hold down spending increases and tax giveaways. He even gave a thumbs down to a nonbinding resolution calling on Bush to include the cost of overseas combat operations in his annual budget, rather than paying for them through emergency spending bills with no offsetting spending cuts.
Such policies pushed Washington deeper into debt at a time when the economy was healthy, leaving it ill-prepared for the global collapse in 2008.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/27/opinion/la-ed-santorum-20120227
Santorum’s record in congress is generally one of favoring bigger government and more spending – not atypical during the Bush years where Santorum served in Senate leadership. (See the Club for Growth’s first fact-check on Santorum, earmarks, and the “Bridge to Nowhere” for more information on Santorum’s spending record during the Bush era.) That Santorum might be better relative to other members of Congress is irrelevant: the claim about him is an absolute statement.
It’s impossible to say that Santorum is 100% a “big government conservative” because he did vote for many things that limited government, but it is certainly clear that Santorum’s record reveals a Member of Congress who stood on the side of big government on several major issues more than he did on the side of fiscal conservatism and economic freedom.
While Santorum’s position is in line with the other candidates in the GOP field, there may be no one left in the race, including the President himself, who is more directly responsible for the growth in the food stamps program than Rick Santorum.
[...]
Notably, the Bush administration was not attempting to eliminate the granting of automatic eligibility in its entirety, but rather only to restrict this status to beneficiaries who were already receiving some other form of cash welfare benefit, where some minimum level of means testing had already been performed. The effort by some state administrators to bypass statutory means testing by simply handing out a piece of paper seems like just the type of regulatory loophole that Congress would have an interest in closing. In the name of fairness, if not fiscal restraint.
But not Rick Santorum, apparently.
In the year following Santorum’s effort to lead the defeat of this proposal in the Senate, 18.7 percent of the households receiving food stamps were deemed automatically eligible under this loophole, which equated to about 2.1 million households (source). By 2010 this figure had grown to a whopping 51.3 percent of all households receiving food stamp benefits, or just over 9.4 million households (source). That’s nearly a 350% increase in only 5 years, and probably accounts for most of the increase in the total number of people receiving food stamp benefits outside of the effects of the economic downturn.
Thanks to Rick Santorum’s “leadership”.
Now that’s not to say that many of these individuals and families would not otherwise be eligible for food stamps. I’m sure many of them would, perhaps even a majority. But with over 50 percent of food stamp recipients now exempt from basic means testing, it’s a safe bet that there is a significant amount of over-spending taking place. Consider that if the 5-year savings number was $574 million in 2006, then 350% of this total (reflecting the increase in the number of recipients deemed automatically eligible since then) would be just over $2 billion. The actual number is probably much higher given that spending per recipient has also increased significantly in recent years.
Rick Santorum promises to cut food stamps spending if he is elected, but he had a prime opportunity to rein in the program when he was in the Senate. Not only did he vote the wrong way, but by his own admission he played a central role in blocking what would have been a very reasonable change in the way the program is administered. If the accusation of being insensitive to the plight of the poor was enough to convince Santorum to oppose such a reasonable, and ultimately nominal reduction in food stamp spending in 2005 – when the unemployment rate was less than 5% – I’m not sure why we should believe that he would resist this same type of pressure in making the more significant cuts he has promised.
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=38111
It’s impossible to say that Santorum is 100% a “big government conservative” because he did vote for many things that limited government, but it is certainly clear that Santorum’s record reveals a Member of Congress who stood on the side of big government on several major issues more than he did on the side of fiscal conservatism and economic freedom.
The deal is that he supported the agenda of a sitting GOP President. This is what most Senators will do. That is why a moderate Republican President is more dangerous than a leftist Democrat.
And Santorum says he wants to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. I’m sure many of his supporters believe that means he wants to replace it with more free market based healthcare. But when Santorum’s “default setting” seems to be government involvement, I can’t help but think he won’t be able to resist tinkering around with health care.
“Senator Santorum poses as fiscally responsible, but he’s the one who broke the bank while in Senate leadership. During his six years in Senate leadership, Senator Santorum repeatedly comprised his principles and played the Washington game. As the poster child of the big government Republican Party that the American people rejected in 2006 and 2008, Senator Santorum is a comprised candidate who cannot offer the stark choice we need between President Obama’s big spending record.”
Newt has 3 opponents to beat and then he will face Obama in the general election.
The ONLY MAN of principle is Newt Gingrich. Look at his record in the House: When president Reagan proposed to rise taxes, Gingrich voted NO. When “Read my Lips” Bush proposed to rise taxes, Gingrich voted NO, even if Reagan and Bush were Republicans. Newt stood up for his conservative principle - smaller government means small taxes.
Only 3 Republicans voted against that bill. A lot of Democrats voted against it. Lindsey Graham voted against it. Wow. And he is someone you are trying to prop up? Yuk. You can have him.
If you can't win on your own, it's somebody else' responsibility to let you win.
raybrr, my response was to post #5, not yours. Thanks.
So tell me, do you not believe that people should be held accountable rather than relying on us to pay their way? A mandate to require people to pay their own way is not the same as requiring the public to pay for those that won’t pay their own way. Show me where Newt as ever said that the public should pay for those who won’t like Santorum, Obama, and Romney have.
I am now of the opinion that the only hope for a fiscal and social conservative to be the head of the GOP ticket is a brokered convention. And even that is a long shot.
It seems to me that the GOP no longer likes, or even wants conservatives.
So much for Santorum’s convictions. Endorsed, voted for and supported some very liberal agendas and candidates and he KNEW what the deal was...now, did he sell out or not?
I saw a presentation of their 'solutions' for medical care a few years ago, given by Newt in person to the national meeting of my specialty. Newt gave a clearer, more focused talk on why and how to take over medicine than anything I've heard from Obama, much less Romney. Why aren't videos of such talks by Newt being discussed, there must be some out there? Why aren't copies of their printed materials being discussed? I went in to the lecture with warm and fuzzy feelings on Newt from the 80s and 90s, not knowing what kind of healthcare he favored. His people passed out handouts prior to the talk. I was scared from them by the time he started talking. They certainly weren't the changes for which I'd hoped. Sure Mitt's record is putting in Romney care, but he now claims he wouldn't do the same at the Federal level. With him a flip is at least plausible. Newt came across as a true believer and he didn't stop claiming support for an individual mandate until he jumped into the ring, after Obamacare was passed. Obama would murder both of them in the debates over healthcare, by truthfully discussing their own records. Santorum, on the other hand, was one of the originators of Health Care Savings Accounts. Rick has been consistently for individually oriented and small business oriented health care solutions. Newt was working out the details for Mitt and Obama. He can keep those principles; America can't stand them.
Newt is a larger than life figure. We need to look at ALL of his record. Yes, there was a golden age of Newt, but there's been an unexpected amount of rust since.
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