There is no issue that riles up today's conservative base like the issue of government spending, perceived to be out of control after last year's $787 billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and on the verge of a health care reform bill that, if passed, could cost close to $1 trillion over the next decade.
In such a context, it's no surprise that Republican candidates are talking, on the eve of this fall's midterm elections, about how Democrats have overspent and how they will, if elected, rein in such expenditures.
It's also no surprise that Jane Norton, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Colorado, is already airing television commercials to that effect...
"It's fashionable right now to talk about being a fiscal conservative and talk about limited government," said Norton, [Pols emphasis] who, under former Gov. Bill Owens, served as director of Colorado's Dept. of Public Health and Environment and later as Lieutenant Governor.
"The fact of the matter is I did cut budgets and my general fund was less. The general fund allotment I had when I left the department of Public Health was less when I left than when I started, about $6.4 million less."
"She didn't say in her ad that her general fund went down," said Bobby Clark, executive director of ProgressNow Action, a Denver-based, liberal organizing group.
"She said she cut spending -- and it's just not true. Spending -- her department budget went up every year."
During Norton's tenure at CDPHE, the department's overall budget did rise from $226.5 million in fiscal year 1999-2000 to a high of $280 million three years later, before the post- 9/11 recession led to across-the-board cuts and slight drop in the department's overall 2002-03 budget, which was $269.5 million.
"A budget going up every year doesn't equate to cutting spending," Clark said. "Jane Norton saying she cut spending is like Sarah Palin saying she could see Russia from her house. It's disingenuous and it's just not true."
But, in Norton's view, she only had control over the money her department received from the state...
"Jane is a wonderful person, but not a fiscal conservative," said former state senator Tom Wiens, who is challenging Norton to be the GOP's U.S. Senate candidate come fall. "We have to have real fiscal conservatives elected to the U.S. Senate," he said. "If you're going to use these numbers from your budget, you have to use the real numbers. You can't make them up. We can't have this kind of thinking where you claim to cut your budget and you don't; and you claim to not raise taxes, and you did."
In Wiens's view, Norton's support for Referendum C in 2006 was, in effect, support for a tax increase...
Particularly interesting here is the fact that Norton is defending herself using a similar approach as Governor Bill Ritter did when then-gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry and others attacked him over budget line items not directly under his control. The biggest difference, of course, is that Democrats don't highlight "spending cuts" in campaign ads as good things.
But if you're to accept Norton's defense, as her campaign no doubt would like you to do, you pretty much have to acknowledge that a whole swath of claims insistently made by Penry and GOP candidates around the state about Democrats in power are meritless. Most likely GOP caucusgoers watching this aren't going to think so, of course, so it just ends up with Norton looking as duplicitous as they've been taught Governor Ritter appears for saying the same thing.
