Chip Hanlon is at the Republican convention in Minneapolis today supporting the efforts set forth in this RedCounty.com [1] article below. He will resume his normal blogging tomorrow.   -EEJS.

 ^{The grumbling. The head shaking. The anger.}

Congressional Republican leaders clearly have no idea what we, their fellow GOP members (and financial backers), say to one another when we get together, yet for years one refrain has been constant: our extreme discontent over how the former GOP majority blew it on spending.

Budget earmarks, which jumped by 285% between 1994 and 2005 as their cost soared by 60%, stand as the perfect symbol of the GOP-led profligacy that drives us crazy still. In and of themselves, earmarks are admittedly a small part in the budget process, amounting to roughly 2% of the federal budget in 2005.  Yet they epitomize the fiscal recklessness that led to Republicans becoming a minority in 2006.

Unable to rein it in on the smaller earmark items, it's no wonder the Republican leadership continued to fail on the more critical structural spending issues such as entitlement reform and a reduction in federal spending (hello Prescription Medicare).  

Still oblivious to the source of our discontent......

read the rest at RedCounty.com [2]