McCain's Real Record on Fiscal Discipline: Lots of "Straight Talk;" No Action to Back it Up

When there’s a dispute in sports, we go to the videotape; in politics, we go to the facts – and the facts show that for all of John McCain’s righteous wrath over federal spending, he has been an active supporter of its enormous increases in recent years.

It’s fine to talk about pork barrel spending, but let’s look at his actual votes on all Senate appropriations bills for domestic spending since he started running for president. 

New research shows that since 2006, the self-appointed guardian against wasteful spending from Arizona actually opposed less than six-tenths of one percent of the discretionary spending approved by the Senate. Counting only those appropriations during which Mr. McCain was actually present and voted for or against, he opposed eight-tenths of one percent and voted for 99.2 percent. And counting only the last two years, while Mr. McCain has been most actively campaigning for president, the self-proclaimed arbiter of fiscal restraint actually voted against not one dollar of the more than $2 trillion in appropriations approved by the Senate.

Senator McCain’s record seems to refute his own campaign promises to balance the budget and pay for the new tax cuts he wants to give business and high-income Americans – and for his new spending – by cutting existing programs.

Here are the particulars as verified by the Senate’s records. For FY 2006, Senator McCain opposed one appropriation bill, $17 billion for discretionary spending in agriculture, out of a total of $940 billion in discretionary spending approved for that fiscal year, or 0.56 percent. For FY 2007, the Senate approved nearly $1.1 trillion in discretionary appropriations, and Senator McCain voted for all of it. For the current fiscal year, 2008, the Senate has approved, again, a little under $1.1 trillion; and again, Senator McCain opposed none of it, at least not by actually voting against any of it.

The economic benefits of restraining spending are sometimes exaggerated in our political discourse, especially when economic conditions are weak. However, the value of actually behaving in ways that correspond to your own “straight talk” cannot be overstated. On this basis, Senator McCain’s record falls painfully short.