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EDITORIAL: Senate votes down Rand Paul’s budget plan

Republicans like to run as fiscal watchdogs, but too often lose their resolve once comfortably ensconced in Washington. Witness the budget-busting spending plan a GOP Congress endorsed — and a Republican president signed — back in February.

Democrats had a field day with that vote. Some liberal pundits argued the budget blueprint was evidence that the GOP had lost any legitimate claim to be the party of spending restraint.

But not so fast.

On Thursday, the Senate voted on Sen. Rand Paul’s proposal to balance the federal budget by 2023. Under the Kentucky Republican’s plan, Congress would cut spending by $400 billion next year and then allow 1 percent increases each year for the rest of the decade. As long as the Congressional Budget Office’s revenue projections stood up, the government would balance the books within five years and begin running surpluses.

To put this in perspective, Sen. Paul’s plan would have allowed for a 14 percent hike in federal spending over the next 10 years. In addition, a $400 billion cut for fiscal 2019 would still leave beltway politicians with more than $4 trillion of other people’s money to spend, about the same as they doled out in fiscal 2016. Sen. Paul’s proposal hardly called for a starvation diet.

The bad news is the measure failed, 76-21. The good news is that the vote identified those Senate Republicans who are willing to back up their campaign rhetoric about fiscal sanity with action.

Among those who supported Sen. Paul’s legislation were Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas, Utah’s Mike Lee, Marco Rubio of Florida, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Charles Grassley of Iowa.

Notably missing from the list is Nevada’s Dean Heller.

Several weak-kneed Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, lambasted the bill, arguing it would devastate the military. That’s nonsense. As Reason’s Eric Boehm pointed out, Congress was under no obligation to reduce the Pentagon’s budget as part of Sen. Paul’s bill. But either way, are Sen. Graham and his fellow hawks implying there is no waste to be found in the military budget? Ridiculous.

It’s also notable that not a single Democrat got behind Sen. Paul’s effort. That’s worth remembering the next time you hear progressives chortle at the notion of the GOP’s “fiscal responsibility.” As Paul Samuelson of The Washington Post noted last month, the idea that Democrats have replaced Republicans as the true fiscal conservatives is “laughable.”

The vote on Sen. Paul’s bill reveals that at least some Republicans are serious about spending control. It also speaks volumes about where Democrats stand on the issue.

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