By Jim Kouri
Monday, June 18, 2007
With each passing day, more and more conservatives are leaving the Republican Party and seeking new political alliances. They are no longer being snookered by fast talking politicians who espouse conservative values while behaving like liberals.
For instance, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina tells her constituents that she is a fiscal conservative -- a real tight-wad with taxpayers' money.
But, according to the Winston-Salem Journal, in marketing herself during her first term, Foxx was awfully liberal with her use of taxpayers' money.
Foxx, a long-time Republican, spent more than $326,000 of taxpayer money to send a whopping 1.6 million pieces of mail to her constituents during 2005-06.
According to the Journal, Foxx outspent the other 12 members of North Carolina's US House delegation on mailings, and spent almost seven times as much as the average member of Congress.
When asked about her expenditures by the Journal reporter Mary Shaffrey, Foxx arrogantly told the reporter "So what?"
So what? In the real world, $326,642 is a lot of money, even if it isn't in Washington.
And Foxx is not being called fiscally irresponsible by Democrats alone. Greensboro's Republican congressman, Rep. Howard Coble, doesn't spend public money for the kind of blanket mailings for which Foxx has now developed a penchant.
"It's fiscally irresponsible, and much abuse results from it ... and the taxpayers ultimately pay the price," Rep. Coble said of Foxx's taxpayer-funded mailings.
The National Taxpayers Union, which opposes the free mail privileges, says that only eight members of the House sent out more than 800,000 pieces of mail last year. And Foxx sent out twice that many according to the NTU.
In other words, Foxx had taxpayers pay for her re-election campaign. With 1.6 million free campaign brochures delivered to constituents, Foxx had a big advantage over her opponent.
In fact, she was raising so much money she was able to send donations to Republican congressional candidates in other states.
"That's a neat little shift of campaign-finance responsibilities: Taxpayers pay for her campaign literature while she pays for that of other candidates in other states," noted Shaffrey.
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