Lots of politicians like to talk about cutting spending, but which ones walk the walk?

The Club for Growth recently compiled a mini-scorecard of all the clean budget cut amendments offered on the recent series of appropriations bills in the House, and calculated what percentage of the time each member of Congress voted for cutting spending.  The results are revealing.

First as to averages:

SC Republicans - 93.6% to cut spending

NC Republicans - 74.3% to cut spending

NC Democrats - 4.8% to cut spending

SC Democrat - 0% to cut spending

Now for the scores for each NC Congresscritter:

REPUBLICANS:

Foxx - 92%

Myrick - 90%

Jones - 85%

Coble - 79%

McHenry - 69%

Ellmers - 31%

DEMOCRATS:

McIntyre - 17%

Kissell - 8%

Price - 4%

Watt - 4%

Shuler - 0%

Butterfield - 0%

Miller - 0%

This scorecard clearly seperates the budget hawks from the wannabees from the big spenders.

The one that is shocking but given some of her other votes maybe not that surprising is Renee Ellmers, who claimed to be a Tea Partier when she was elected but has repeatedly shown that she is not.  On this scorecard, she tied in budget cutting with black Chicago Democrat Bobby Rush who also got 31% and was only one point higher than Ohio liberal gadfly Dennis Kucinich who got 30%.  Ellmers is not voting much better than we would have expected out of Bobby Etheridge.

McHenry and Coble rate as ''wannabees''  They and Ellmers bring down our percentage relative to SC.  The lowest individual total for SC Republicans was the same as the highest individual total for NC Republicans - 92.

This also shows just how phony the media hype about ''Blue Dogs'' being ''conservative'' has been.  Shuler at 0, Kissell at 8, and McIntyre at 17 are all certified big spenders.

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/projec...mp;id=1097

Good stuff R, thanks for this. The 100%ers are all big names to me and should be the "leadership" that side of the aisle should be looking to.

Another key test just occured - the vote on the combined Highway / Flood Insurance / Student Loan bill.  Republicans pledged not to combine such things into one bill, but out surrender monkey House and Senate ''leaders'' caved in to the Democrats and did it anyway.  They even caved in and allowed the Keystone Pipeline authorization to be taken out.  What pathetic weaklings our ''leaders'' are!  So there may be a few good things in the bill, but overall, more bad, and it hikes spending a good bit.

So this is another bill that seperates the spenders from the budget hawks.

Who were the good guys and bad guys in North Carolina?

The good guys were Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry.  The bad guys were the rest of the Repubicans and all the Democrats.  The bad guys include both NC Senators.

In South Carolina, the whole GOP delegation, House and Senate were in the camp of the good guys.  Way to go SC!  We need more like you.

Several points

- Virginia Foxx voted as a budget hawk again.  She is proving to be the most solid one in the delegation

- McHenry apparently wised up from his last mediocre but not absolutely dreadful score on the Club for Growth tally.

- Walter Jones used to be a budget hawk, but he seems to be going south on this as he already has on so many other issues.

- Renee Ellmers, or Renegade Renee, has again shown her true colors as a spender.  Her votes are not a lot different than Bobby Etheridge would have voted.  She needs a serious primary in 2014 from a conservative.

- Richard Burr is again showing himself as a spender.  He votes like Hagan, and to the left of moderate SC Republican Lindsay Graham.  He needs a primary if he runs again in 2016.

Just looked at voting records on another bill, this time the Transportation / HUD bill, and the various amendments to cut spending in that bill.

Renee Ellmers, again had the worst NC record as a spender.  Ellmers voted AGAINST the following cuts:

- eliminating the government funded ''essential air service'' boondoggle

- eliminating the Community Development Block Grant

- eliminating the earmark for DC transit

- cutting 1% across the board from the entire bill

Foxx, McHenry, and Coble voted FOR all of the amendments to cut spending. Jones and Myrick voted for all the cuts except the DC transit earmark.

Another significant bill was the one to eliminate funding for the Legal Services Corporation.  Foxx and Myrick voted to eliminate that program.  Ellmers and Coble voted to keep it.  Jones and McHenry did not vote.

The pattern is pretty consistent on spending votes.  Virginia Foxx is NC's best budget hawk.  Renee Ellmers is by far the biggest spender in the GOP delegation from NC.  The others are somewhere in the middle.