Ron Paul: Closet Porker?

Viewed through the Club for Growth lens, GOP crazy man Ron Paul can actually be mistaken for a stable individual.  One with a generally admirable fiscal policy record.

• Voted for a resolution proposing a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers to raise taxes
• Voted for a capital gains tax cut
• Voted for a bill to require Congress to replace the tax code with a simple and fair tax system
• Voted to cut taxes by $80 billion over five years
• Voted to override Clinton's veto and repeal the Death Tax
• Voted to override Clinton's veto and alleviate the marriage penalty
• Voted to repeal the tax on Social Security benefits
• Voted for the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003
• Voted to permanently repeal the Death Tax
• Voted to extend the Bush tax cuts

Paul's also got a long history of voting against expansionary government spending, in keeping with his opinion that we ought to disband everything from the IRS to the military.  But the Club's new study of the radically pennywise Congressman's recent record reveals some curiously spendthrift moments.

Ron Paul's history contains some curious indiscretions, including a vote for $232 million for federally mandated election reform (only 1 of 21 Republicans to vote for it) and a vote against the line-item veto -even after it was modified to pass constitutional muster. Paul's record on pork was outstanding in 2006, voting for all 19 of Jeff Flake's anti-pork amendments in 2006, but his record took a stark turn for the worse in 2007, in which Paul received an embarrassing 29% on the Club for Growth's RePORK Card, voting for only 12 of the 50 anti-pork amendments.

Some of the outrageous pork projects Paul voted to keep include $231,000 for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association's Urban Center; $129,000 for the "perfect Christmas tree project;" $300,000 for the On Location Entertainment Industry Craft Technician Training Project in California; $150,000 for the South Carolina Aquarium; and $500,000 for the National Mule and Packers Museum in California. This year, Ron Paul requested more than sixty earmarks "worth tens of millions of dollars for causes as diverse as rebuilding a Texas theater, funding a local trolley, and helping his state's shrimp industry."

In defense of his support for earmarks, Rep. Paul took the if you can't beat 'em, join 'em position, arguing that "I don't think they should take our money in the first place. But if they take it, I think we should ask for it back." This is a contradiction of Paul's self-proclaimed "opposition to appropriations not authorized within the enumerated powers of the Constitution."