On the Western Banks of the Shenandoah

…..before he comes to Mt. Jackson, but hey, you take an audience with your Congresscritter when you can get it. Before he comes to the annual Lincoln Day Dinner next Friday, Congressman Goodlatte will host a dutch treat luncheon next Monday at Creekside Plain and Fancy from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The cost is $15. You can pay at the door, but you need to RSVP with Clay Sutton by COB tommorrow, Thursday, March 18th.

Congressman Goodlatte is of course a firm no vote for the Democratic health package, but certainly all of our representatives need to hear from us, particularly in these trying economic times as they try to hold the line on both taxes and spending. I likely won’t be able to make it, but I encourage everyone to take the opportunity to bend the Congressman’s ear and support his upcoming bid for re-election.

Goodlatte’s visit comes on the heels of his endorsement of Shenandoah County Republican Vice-Chairman Jeremy McCleary in his run for the mayor of Woodstock.

Far away from our own commonwealth, word that an incumbent congresswoman in Kansas will be seeing a primary challenge from the right. From CQ Politics:

A Kansas state senator announced Tuesday that he is considering challenging Republican freshman Rep. Lynn Jenkins in the GOP primary in August 2010.

“When Lynn was elected, there were a lot of Republicans who were suspect of how genuine a conservative she was,” Pyle said in his announcement. “But most of us decided to take a wait-and-see approach. With her record before she was elected to Congress, and just a few votes while in Congress, it is abundantly clear that Lynn is not a conservative.”

What’s interesting about this case is that this not some lone activist mounting a challenge against an “impure” Republican. The candidate is a sitting official, so they already have a platform and an activist base. Additionally, Jenkins has not exactly been a breakaway figure in the House–she stuck with her fellow Republicans on the stimulus and health care. Her biggest sin is the same one former Congressman Jim Ryun brought up when he faced off against Jenkins for the nomination in 2008: Jenkins is pro-choice to the point where she publicly allies herself with fellow pro-choice Republicans.

As it should be pointed out whenever we talk about primaries, all politics is local. Kansas has a long and storied history of fighting within its GOP between moderates and conservatives. Indeed, the state’s current Governor is a Democrat who bolted the GOP to run with now HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Still, this is not the first challenge to a sitting GOPer, nor will it be the last. The brand is in such bad shape that there’s a brewing conservative movement to boot as many moderates and “soft” conservatives as possible in favor of starting over again with principled candidates. Indeed, this has reached our backyard in the visage of a challenge against Frank Wolf (though I suspect this gu will do no better than the last one, who barely cracked 10%). There’s even been word of a challenge to Congressman Goodlatte, who voted against the intitial TARP package last fall. If that’s not a true conservative, than I don’t know what is–though again, Goodlatte’s is a case of local interests meshing with national movements.You can bet your bottom dollar, though, that I’ll do everything in my power to keep Goodlatte in the House.

My guess: pretty much any Republican with less than a 80% lifetime score from the American Conservative Union will see a challenge, though the strength of the candidates will vary widely.

Congressman Bob Goodlatte, though not known as one of Washington’s key fiscal critics, has been a steadfast opponent of the veritable spending spree that has coursed through Washington, D.C. over the past six months. Opposing both the bailout and the stimulus, Congressman Goodlatte has recognized both the short-term and long-term implications of trying to spend our way out of our current economic predicament. From his weekly column: 

This past week House Democrats presented their $3.6 trillion budget resolution – a budget which spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much. The Democrat budget proposes a deficit of $1.2 trillion for 2010, with the national debt climbing to $17.1 trillion.  It also includes one of the largest tax increases in history.  The spending in this budget is so massive that independent estimates suggest roughly 250,000 new federal bureaucrats may be needed to spend it all. 

….

In these challenging economic times it is even more important for government to control spending. The federal government must work to both eliminate every cent of waste and squeeze every cent of value out of each dollar our citizens entrust to it.  Families and small businesses all across our nation understand what it means to make tough decisions each day about what they can and cannot afford, and Congress should not be allowed to ignore these tough decisions when creating spending policies for the federal government.   

One aspect of spending that has gotten alot of attention is earmarking. Here too Congressman Goodlatte has put actions behind his words. The Daily News Record notes that he has submitted the sixth lowest number of earmarks of any member of Congress:

xGoodlatte himself has long said that cutting wasteful spending should be a priority for Congress.

Earmarks, he said, can be useful for setting aside funds that have already been budgeted for worthwhile projects, based on the needs of communities, he said in a statement on Friday.

“While I have made limited use of earmarks, there have been serious abuses and excesses by others with this process,” he said.

Not spending the money that has already been budgeted is not an option, he said, because the funds would be redirected to other projects.

Virginia’s Sixth District should be represented fairly in the earmark process, he said.

More disclosure and accountability is needed, Goodlatte said.

“The entire Congress,” he said, “should enact a moratorium on earmarks until standards are adopted for all.  But until that is done I will continue to use my own careful review process,” in weighing the legitimacy of earmark-related funding.

As Congressman Goodlatte notes, the earmark process is often misunderstood. While it is correct that these projects are often quite silly and are used to reward supporters in a quiet manner, the money is generally already set aside. Indeed, Congressman Ron Paul, while voting against all earmarks and budgets, argues that all money should be earmarked so as to know its exact use. Regardless of your views on earmarks, however, it is certainly heartening to see a member of Congress that recognizes the severity of the situation and that there is no need to risk mortgaging the next generation and endangering the income of the current one to pay for things we can’t really afford and who understands the government’s moral responsibility in spending citizen’s earnings for the common good. 

It is especially heartening knowing that he’s MY Congressman.

Sorry for just now getting this up, but politics and blogging has not been at the very front of my mind these last few days. At any rate, here are Congressman Goodlatte’s complete remarks from Saturday’s Lincoln Day Dinner, in two parts. Ill have the complete remarks of all three Republican contenders up tomorrow. I apologize for the choppy focus of the video–this is what you get when your videographer is trying to tweet the speeches and film them at the same time. 

The House Republicans from Virginia (newly having a minority of the state’s seats after a narrow loss in the 5th) were among those who met with Obama, and even those who voted for the $700 billion TARP package this fall seemed to hae little enthusiasim for the new proposal. However, leading the pack was my congressman, Bob Goodlatte, who said, courtesy the WashTimes:

“My biggest concern is the enormous size of it and the fact it is a big government stimulus and not a stimulus of our economy,” Goodlatte said. 

After looking at  my post below, I think its hard not to feel the same way.