{"id":8653,"date":"2011-02-11T14:02:09","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T19:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=8653"},"modified":"2011-02-11T14:02:09","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T19:02:09","slug":"new-arkansas-senator-says-no-to-tea-party-caucus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/8653\/new-arkansas-senator-says-no-to-tea-party-caucus\/","title":{"rendered":"New Arkansas Senator Says No To Tea Party Caucus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The uniqueness of Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jim DeMint (R-SC) in joining their chamber\u2019s Tea Party caucus shone forth again when yet another freshman conservative declined to join their ranks.\u00a0 Tea Party darling Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) refuses to join<\/a>.\u00a0 Now, it\u2019s John Boozman\u2019s (R-AR) turn.<\/p>\n

Officially, Boozman says he doesn\u2019t want the public to confuse the tri-partisan nature of the Tea Party (Republican, Reagan Democrat, and Independent) with being an arm of the GOP.\u00a0 But closer scrutiny of Boozman\u2019s rationale<\/a> to ABC News indicates he\u2019s not ready to balance the budget by cutting agricultural subsidies.<\/p>\n

“But it doesn’t sound like ag subsidies will be at the top of your list for things to cut,” Karl said.<\/p>\n

“We’re going to have to look at everything but ag subsidies are like everything else. That affects jobs,” the senator said. “Now listen, the one thing about agriculture is we’ve lost our manufacturing, we’ve lost a great deal of jobs overseas, lots of our industry. The last thing in the world we need to do is lose the ability to produce our food.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chances are Boozman doesn\u2019t want to tie himself to unqualified budget cutters like Paul, Lee, or DeMint.\u00a0 Boozman\u2019s calculation may be that it\u2019s far better to fight for certain cuts while arguing to keep tax-supported jobs in his home state.<\/p>\n

Senators like Rubio and Boozman argue that caucus membership in the Senate isn\u2019t as important in the upper chamber as it is in the House.\u00a0 Any member of the Senate can unilaterally slow or kill legislation he doesn\u2019t like.\u00a0 While that\u2019s true, it\u2019s also a way to sidestep a measure of accountability.\u00a0 After all, if your major theme is cutting the budget, why not join a group that won\u2019t make exceptions for pet pork projects?<\/p>\n

Eventually, Paul, Lee, or DeMint might prove the truth of the single senator theory by killing bills favored by Rubio or Boozman.\u00a0 If that happens, don\u2019t be surprised to find Rubio and Boozman caught between their rhetoric and their record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The uniqueness of Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jim DeMint (R-SC) in joining their chamber\u2019s Tea Party caucus shone forth again when yet another freshman conservative declined to join their ranks.\u00a0 Tea Party darling Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) refuses to join.\u00a0 Now, it\u2019s John Boozman\u2019s (R-AR) turn. Officially, Boozman says he doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,2284,271,2393,352,1860,669,2249,28,178],"class_list":["post-8653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-caucus","tag-jim-demint","tag-john-boozman","tag-marco-rubio","tag-mike-lee","tag-rand-paul","tag-subsidy","tag-tea-party","tag-u-s-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8653"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8656,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8653\/revisions\/8656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}