The Noem campaign recently sent an email to their mailing list titled, “Not One Bit”, in which Noem claims that she’s the same person now as when she first went to Washington, DC. I often lament that Noem isn’t the representative that she used to be, and I suspect many South Dakotans feel the same way or Noem wouldn’t have sent that email.
When Noem went to Washington as a Tea Party favorite, she was committed to reigning in wasteful federal spending that puts future generations of South Dakotans at risk. In her first year in Congress, Noem and her freshman class bucked the establishment Republicans and managed to pass the Budget Control Act. What’s more, that was done with Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House. From 2011-2013, Noem issued 17 press releases regarding federal spending and the debt. Hear are a few quotes from 2011-2013:
“In my short time in Washington, I have already voted for trillions in spending cuts and I will not stop fighting tooth-and-nail to force Washington to live within its means.”
“Our economy needs a fiscal plan that cuts wasteful spending, reins in out of control government programs and frees small businesses and entrepreneurs to do what they do best – create jobs,”
“It took our nation 233 years to accumulate a national debt of $11 trillion. Yet President Barack Obama’s own spending plans puts us on a path to double our national debt over the next ten years. We simply cannot continue down this path. Requiring government to no longer spend more than it collects is an important step in tackling our crushing burden of debt that hurts job creation”
Sadly, that Kristi Noem is no longer with us. From 2014 -2017, Noem has not issued a single press release regarding her work to reduce government spending. She has voted to increase the budget caps in the Budget Control Act, and she routinely votes in favor of spending bills which exceed the spending caps that she helped put in place. Since Noem stopped “fighting tooth-and-nail to force Washington to live within its means,” our national debt has ballooned from $16 to $20 trillion.
I’ll end part 1 with a quote from the “pre-establishment” Kristi:
More frightening is the response the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan when he asked what kind of tax rates his kids would have to pay to finance the government’s current spending promises. The CBO was quite clear: the bottom tax bracket, which is now 10 percent, would have to rise to 25 percent, the middle rate to 63 percent and the top rate, which many small businesses pay, to 88 percent. The CBO stated, “This could have some negative effects on the economy at that time.” No kidding.
http://noem.house.gov/index.cfm/2012/4/understanding-our-nation-s-fiscal-burden