A Flimsy Excuse

Yesterday it was discussed in various publications (here, here, here, here, and here) how Mr. Tiahrt’s offices increased their spending by 11% in 2009. These are, by the way, his taxpayer-funded congressional offices (not to be confused with his campaign offices, although does Tiahrt really know the difference?). These increases, it was reported, included a 22% raise in payroll that brought Tiahrt’s government office payroll above $1 million.

Coupled with last week’s report that Mr. Tiahrt spent $107,000 of taxpayer money last year on franking mail, and we get a troubling picture of a Congressman that sure talks a lot about reducing federal spending, but makes sure to do his part to spend as much taxpayer money as possible. If Mr. Tiahrt was actually serious about lowering the amount of money spent by the federal government, it would be nice to see him start with the only part of the budget that he individually has direct control over.

It might be a small part of the budget, but it’s the little things that make a big impression on voters.

The problem for Mr. Tiahrt, when it comes to these little things, is that he feels an incessant need to make excuses for shortcomings such as these; excuses that bring about further questions regarding how his operations are run and if he is actually the true conservative that he has spent so much time touting himself as.

The Obama Excuse

Responding to the questions surrounding Tiahrt’s increase in office spending, Tiahrt spokesman Sam Sackett claimed that the increase in expenditures was a result of the election of President Obama and the increase in phone calls to the offices that came with it. According to Sackett, Tiahrt’s office averaged 50-60 calls a day during the Bush administration, and has averaged more than 200 calls a day since Obama’s election. “We had to employ a number of people to answer phone calls,” Sackett said, in his attempt to deflect the criticism.

The problem with this excuse is that it fails to acknowledge how congressional offices actually operate because the phones in most congressional offices are answered by UNPAID INTERNS. When I worked as an intern in a congressional district office several summers ago, my primary job was to answer phones and record constituent opinions. Nobody in that office that was actually on the payroll answered the phones unless all of the unpaid interns were already speaking with constituents.

If Tiahrt’s office was really getting so many more calls because of Obama’s election, they would have just hired more unpaid interns to pick up the phone (and believe me, you can ALWAYS find high school and college students to work internships). Obama complaints are never actually going to translate into casework (the stuff that the paid employees at district offices do) or more legislative research (the stuff that the paid employees in DC do); unpaid interns can very easily be trained to answer the phones and log the complaints about Obama into their Congressional database.

The Obama Excuse also makes little sense because Mr. Moran is not making a similar excuse. If Tiahrt needed to hire more people to deal with an increase in complaints regarding President Obama, wouldn’t Mr. Moran also need to hire more people to deal with these same complaints from his constituents? Moran ostensibly represents an even MORE Conservative district, and should get even more complaints (or is there another reason why the frontrunner to replace Mr. Tiahrt right now is actually a Democrat).

It’s impossible to fully believe The Obama Excuse because Mr. Moran’s payroll actually decreased in 2009. I think it’s fair to assume that both offices would get a reasonably similar increase in phone calls and complaints, and for this reason it makes no sense that Mr. Tiahrt would need to increase payroll, while Mr. Moran decreases it.

Clearly, something out of the ordinary is happening here.

The Blame Game

The most troubling thing to me about The Obama Excuse is that it disingenuously sends the blame about the increase in payroll towards the President. It looks to me as if Mr. Tiahrt’s people are trying to blame Obama for the fact that their office had to spend more money. You can think whatever you do about Obama, but their attempts to spin the issue this way reek of attempts to make it a partisan issue.

I feel like Tiahrt’s people are trying to harness voter discontent for the Obama administration to somehow spin it into making people think that Mr. Tiahrt was forced by the President to spend more money on his payroll. While I don’t believe their Obama Excuse, I also see it as a flimsy ploy to gain support from people that are upset with Obama.

Do they really need to stoop this low?

The Tiahrt Five

Another reason why The Obama Excuse is so baseless is the fact that more than half of the increase in spending went to five people that are not only also paid by Mr. Tiahrt’s Senate campaign, but include four recently named members of the campaign leadership team. Even if the increase in spending was about the Obama calls, Mr. Tiahrt wouldn’t really be having his leadership team be fielding these calls, would he?

The fact that so much of the spending increase went to people that also work on his campaign makes me wonder if the increase in spending is tacitly connected to Mr. Tiahrt’s campaign activities. While his spokesperson makes clear that most congressmen have dual-staff employees being paid by both the federal government and the campaign, it is striking to me that Tiahrt’s people would even come close to flirting this line considering their recent scare with the Congressional Ethics committee.

As I’ve written on numerous occasions, there is a fine line between the activities of a campaign and those of the federal government, and this large increase in spending on staff payroll gives me the impression that Tiahrt’s office and campaign might have been crossing that line.

How To Operate a Payroll

At a recent town hall meeting Mr. Tiahrt spoke about how his experience as a former businessman has taught him how to meet a monthly payroll. While I’ll let you decide if his experience at Boeing actually helped to teach him about meeting a payroll like a small businessperson, I think his recent payrolls clearly show that he does not know how to manage one.

Everybody knows that the economy has been rough, and we all have heard as much about how the federal government has been spending too much money. Mr. Tiahrt has been telling us these things for the better part of the past year, but he has apparently not been listening. Most families know what it takes to cut back on their household spending in times like these, but Mr. Tiahrt is proving to us that he does not know how to cut back.

Once again Mr. Tiahrt has proved to me that he is not a true fiscally conservative deficit hawk. While Mr. Tiahrt consistently claims that he cares about lowering the deficit, he consistently acts in ways that are contrary to his supposed beliefs. If we can’t trust Mr. Tiahrt to lower his own staff’s expenditures, and we can’t trust him to be honest about why he is spending more money (as I don’t believe The Obama Excuse), how can we possibly trust him to honestly work to lower the budget deficit?

Without Excuses,

Publius