Redstate

By Sheriff Mike Bouchard Posted in 2006 | Featured Stories — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

RedState is pleased to welcome Sheriff Mike Bouchard to the front page.

Quick quiz: Who’s the US Senate’s biggest spender?

Ted Kennedy? Robert Byrd?

The answer may surprise you.

According to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, who keeps a running list of the cost of spending earmarks and who votes for them in his desk on the Senate floor, the Senate’s biggest spender is Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow. As a Michigan taxpayer and former colleague of hers in the Michigan legislature, I’m not the least bit surprised at how careless she’s been with your money.

In Michigan, we’ve been watching her out-of-control spending for years.

Read on . . .

I was appalled watching the Senate debate spending issues in this past year. For instance, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, even the most obvious pork, the now infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” was protected by the Senate’s club of big spenders against reformers looking to provide offsets for the unanticipated costs of disaster relief. Just because you have checks in the check book, doesn't mean you have money in the bank. Washington has failed to understand that.

That’s one of the reasons I decided to run against Senator Stabenow this year.

As regular RedState readers are well aware, Senator Coburn’s Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which would create a “Google like” search engine for federal earmarks, grants, loans, and contracts, is on a fast track to enactment. I have publicly endorsed this common sense measure because it would add more sunlight into Washington’s secret spending process.

One name conspicuously absent from the list of the bill’s Senate supporters was Senator Stabenow’s.

Although you couldn’t find three people on Main Street who wouldn’t support such legislation, it’s not hard to imagine why Stabenow didn’t support the bill given her record on spending. Accountability and transparency have never been her strong suits as a legislator. Rather, Senator Stabenow has excelled as a fundraiser and campaigner thanks in no small part to the huge amounts of taxpayer money, your money, she doles out all around the country.

Controlling spending will be one of my biggest priorities if I’m elected to the Senate because so much else depends on it. For instance, the tax cuts which have been instrumental in restoring our economy can only be sustained if there’s a reasonable level of spending.

Next, getting our financial house in order is not only important from an economic standpoint, but a security standpoint as well. Historian Niall Ferguson has carefully examined the role public finance plays in the ability of nations to sustain their military might. He’s written that our unbalanced national finances could eventually severely hamper our ability to project the force necessary to keep us safe at home.

In the end, I won’t out raise or outspend Senator Stabenow in the campaign, but I will work harder and smarter than she does. I’ve got a great team and a message that is resonating with Michigan’s voters who are tired of watching Congress waste their tax dollars while Michigan remains the only state other than disaster ridden Louisiana and Mississippi to actually lose jobs in the past few years. But I can’t do it alone.

My opponent has run statewide several times while I’m making my first run at statewide office. Please take a moment to visit me at www.mikeformichigan.com and learn more about where I stand on the issues (my highly entertaining commercials alone are worth a visit).

If you agree with me that we need a change in the US Senate, I hope you’ll join me in my quest to restore fiscal sanity to Washington, DC.