Truth About Fiscal Conservatives

If you’re like me then you want to know the facts not the make believe world that we get with the spin in our living room from cable “News” networks. They would have us believe that “young guns” in congress like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are the next generation of politicians who will stop the out of control spending in Washington. To bad they have a voting record and a history of large spending and not caring about the debt. Lets look at some of the “conservative” members of Congress like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor



Paul Ryan was elected to congress in 1998 and when he took office in 1999 the debt clock had stopped running and we where paying down the national debt. Cantor was elected in 2000 when thanks to Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton the nation was running a surplus for the first time in most of our lives.

Shortly after taking office we had the first bush tax cuts which added over 1.3 trillion dollars to the national debt, both Ryan and Cantor voted in favor of these tax cuts and immediately took us from a surplus and restarted the national debt clock

RUNNING TOTAL 1.3 TRILLION

Both men voted to authorize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan even though the intelligence was being disputed on our reasons for invading Iraq. Voting for these wars added at least another 1.5 trillion to the national debt.

Running Total 2.8 Trillion

While now claiming to be fiscal and wanting to cut “entitlements” both men voted to pass the Medicare Part D plan which would not only add at least 7 trillion to the national debt but had no cost controls and was a huge handout to the drug companies. As we now see this wasn’t passed to help seniors but was passed to put a strain on the Medicare system and help bankrupt it earlier then it would have so the party whose new drug plan could claim we can not afford the whole system and it needs to be scrapped.

Running Total 9.8 Trillion

In 2008 we where in the middle of a banking crisis that threatened to bring down the whole economy, republicans put the blame on democrats, completely ignoring the fact that from 1994-2006 republicans controlled both the house and the Senate and could of at any time reigned in the banks and the mortgage companies but chose to ignore the issues and instead they deregulated like never before and turned a blind eye as wall street ran wild. The original bailout was for 800 billion dollars but as we later found out it’s more like 5 trillion dollars, but for sake of argument we will go with the smaller number..

Running Total 10.6 Trillion

In 2008 a bailout of the auto industry was proposed, Eric Cantor had found his religion and voted against it while Paul Ryan still spent like a drunken sailor and voted for it.

How did they allow so much debt to go unnoticed? Most of the debt was “off book” so it didn’t count against the national debt, even though it was debt spending. For the 8 years before President Obama took office Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor voted YES to raise the debt ceiling every time they where asked. This doesn’t even include the millions in pork that these two “fiscal conservatives” have asked for.

Making it worse - they managed to run up over 10 trillion in debt and still had the nerve to vote against things like Schip which helps poor children get insurance and often voted against helping the poor and for harming the environment. So I wonder - why isn’t the Tea Party or the true fiscal conservatives trying to run these 2 guys out of town? To say you are concerned about Americas spending and Debt and vote for or support these 2 men makes you a hypocrite, nothing more or nothing less.

A final message - if you think the republicans of 2001-2008 where fiscal Obama would have to raise the debt to 21 trillion to equal what they spent and he would have to raise it to over 28 trillion to triple it like the "great" Ronald Reagan did.