How far would The Washington Post go to try to embarrass Tea Party conservatives about being hypocrites? Well, here’s an easy Washington tactic. On Monday, Post reporter David Fahrenthold took a dozen of them to task for sending too much “franked” congressional mail and other outreach:
They are among the House's fervent budget-cutters: 13 legislators who have said they won't raise the debt ceiling without a promise to slash government spending. But these 13 also hold another designation. They have become, unwittingly, a symbol of the very truth that often stymies budget-cutting: Every dollar of federal spending is special to somebody.
In the first three months of 2011, these 12 Republicans and one Democrat were among the members of Congress who spent the most taxpayer money on fliers, brochures, radio ads, e-mails and automated phone calls to constituents.
Each spent more than $50,000 on these communications, more than six times the average in Congress. In most cases, the mailings carried smiling pictures of the congressmen and messages about their work on the Hill.
The A-ha! online headline was "Fervent budget-cutters spend big on mass communication."
Anyone who’s ever written or received a congressional piece of franked mail knows they routinely look promotional, featuring large pictures and prominent name ID for the Member of Congress. A staunch penny-pinching Tea Partier could certainly propose cutting back on mass-market franked mail from Members of Congress.
Where this looks partisan for The Washington Post is that they would dismiss it as a trifling amount if Tea Partiers proposed a franking reform/cut themselves, or if they attempted to curtail congressional pay. One can tell from the way liberal editorialists mock saving a half-billion dollars on public broadcasting as a tiny smidgen of spending. But no amount is too small when you’re rattling Tea Party cages. Fahrenthold went on Hypocrisy Watch:
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), for instance, voted against a proposal to raise the federal debt ceiling without spending reductions attached. Since then, Buchanan has said that "the time is now for Washington to make the tough choices."
In the first quarter of 2011, House records show, Buchanan spent $142,198 on mailings and other means of mass communication. That was more than any other representative, and about 19 times the average expenditure of $7,500. Among his colleagues, 209 representatives got by without spending any money in that quarter, according to House records.
Fahrenthold admitted this is a tiny fraction of the House budget, “ But it has been singled out by good-government groups, which believe that legislators use the mailings, in particular, to promote themselves at taxpayer expense.” He then solicited a wrist-slap from the National Taxpayers Union:
“Many of those constituents already got acquainted — for better or worse — with their new lawmakers months before on the campaign trail, and now they’re paying for the second time around with their own tax dollars,” Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union wrote in an e-mail. “That may not be the most politically solid foot to start off with for those elected on promises to shake up business as usual in Washington.”
It might not look great to a Tea Party voter. But it might look awfully silly for an Obama-loving newspaper (or Obama-loving Democrat) to try to make this a campaign issue.
