A mandate for restraint

By Tom Quiner

Prepared by Randall Hoven

In the 2006 midterm elections, Democrats picked up 31 seats in the House and 5 Senate seats.

In the 2008 elections, Democrats picked up another 21 House seats, 8 Senate seats, and the White House.

There are a number of factors that decide elections. One of the critical factors in Republican’s fall from grace was spending and big government.

President Bush had run as a “compassionate” conservative. Under his administration, federal spending increased by 54 percent. By contrast, it had only increased 12 percent in the Clinton/Gingrich years. Subsidy programs increased by 30 percent under Bush II. Government employment exploded by 1.6 million jobs. Government regulations increased by 70 percent.

At one point he tripled spending for the Department of Education. The list goes on.

Voters threw the bums out. And yet Mr. Bush’s spending appetites pale to President Obama’s as you can see in the chart above.

In yesterday’s elections, the party that voters loathed two short years ago picked up a staggering 60 House seats and at least 6 (and probably more) Senate seats.

Have voters once again fallen in love with Republicans? I don’t think so.

I think they’ve fallen out of love with President Obama and his leftward lurching party.  “Hope and change” sounded good two years ago, now the bill has come due.

Quiner’s Diner has chronicled the Democrat’s spending tsunami many times. Here are a few morsels:

• Whereas the average annual deficit under President Bush II was $251 billion dollars, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that President Obama’s budgets and proposals will produce a $1.056 trillion average annual deficit for 2009 through 2020.

• The deficit for the last fiscal year Republicans controlled the budget, 2007, was $161 billion.

• The smallest expected Obama/Pelosi/Reid deficit based on Democrats’ plans is $724 billion in 2014 according to CBO projections.

Yesterday, the electorate spoke loud and clear: show some restraint.

We threw out Republicans for reckless spending the previous two election cycles.

We did it again to Democrats yesterday.

Washington, are you listening? Show some restraint.

Here in Iowa, voters sent a message of restraint to the three Supreme Justices up for retention. We threw them out for imposing gay marriage on Iowa. Voters are acutely sensitive these days to radical liberalism.

The voters said they don’t want Democrats hijacking America with their liberal agenda, just as they told Republicans that they don’t want them hijacking America with their liberal spending habits.

Voters don’t like liberalism. We like restraint.