Spending Hawks Not So Hawkish About Cuts in Home Districts

Lawmakers who take a hard stand against federal spending are having a hard time reconciling that position when cuts are aimed at their home districts, The New York Times reported.

It's a bipartisan problem, and a good example of how tough it is to control government spending and deficits. Many so-called deficit hawks of both parties will put up a fight when money and jobs for their constituents are threatened.

The Times gives three prominent examples:

While Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, said he was all for slowing federal spending, he has no appetite for the substantial cuts in farm programs proposed in President Obama's new budget.

And Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a fiscal conservative and a senior Republican on the Budget Committee, vowed to resist reductions in space program spending that would flow back home.

Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri, issued a press release simultaneously lamenting the deficit spending outlined in the new budget and protesting cuts in Pentagon projects important to his state.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) has protested all of the above spending cuts -- to NASA, the military and farms -- while also saying we "must all share in this responsibility" in reducing the deficit, according to the Times.

Principled opponents of federal spending say cutting earmarks and other spending shouldn't be left to the very people whose job it is to steer money to their home districts. They say the only solution for reducing the deficit might be an independent commission, separate from Congress, that would crunch numbers and rein in the dollars.

"There are not enough statesmen who will stand up and say, cut it even when it is in my district," Rep. Jeff Flake of (R-Ariz.) told the newspaper.