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(Alexandria, VA) -- Almost a decade has passed since the political revolution that changed party control of Congress, but what happened to the fiscal revolution that was supposed to follow? The latest BillTally study released today from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) offers surprising data showing how the prospects for smaller government went from promising, to poor, to uncertain today.

Created in 1991, BillTally computes a net annual agenda for each Member of Congress based on sponsorship and cosponsorship of pending legislation (whose costs are estimated by using third-party sources or neutral data). The study facilitates a unique look at the fiscal behavior of lawmakers, free from the influence of committees, party leaders, and rules surrounding floor votes. Among NTUF's findings:

• During the first 18 months of the current Congress, 57 Representatives and 31 Senators could not find a single piece of spending reduction legislation to support. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) sponsored or cosponsored the most spending cuts (11) in the House, while Russ Feingold (D-WI) backed the largest number of spending-reduction bills (10) in the Senate. Leading the House for support of spending increases was Martin Frost (D-TX), with 273 bills. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) topped the Senate by sponsoring or cosponsoring 174 spending-hike bills.
• Since the early years of the Republican accession to leadership, the typical GOP lawmaker's yearly spending agenda has trended upward, reaching record highs in this Congress ($35.6 billion in the House and $32.7 billion in the Senate). Even so, the typical House Democrat backed legislation that would increase federal outlays by a net of $509.4 billion, while the typical Senate Democrat's net annual agenda was +$195.8 billion.
• Within the first 18 months of the 108^th Congress, a total of 1,147 House bills and 871 Senate bills were identified as having a fiscal impact of at least $1 million. Spending-hike bills outnumbered spending cuts by an overall ratio of 25.5 to 1
• Freshman lawmakers in both parties proposed less spending than their longer-serving colleagues (47 percent less in the House and 76 percent less in the Senate).
• The 20 Senators at the top of Roll Call newspaper's list for greatest personal wealth called for a 77 percent bigger boost in federal budget outlays than the average for their 80 remaining colleagues. In the House, however, the opposite held true: the 20 richest Representatives sought federal spending increases that were 73 percent smaller than their less-wealthy counterparts.

NTUF Senior Policy Analyst and study author Demian Brady noted that "this trend to spend began long before September 11. Indeed, demands for spending on child care, welfare, and entitlements far outpaced those for defense and homeland security." Nonetheless, BillTally also provides a few indications that Members may be regaining an interest in trimming the budget. Even as the number of spending increase bills hit records, for the first time since the 103^rd Congress, spending cut bills in the House became more prevalent as well. This uptick also occurred in the Senate, for the first time since the 104^th Congress.

"Ten years ago, record deficits spurred the movement toward proposals to cut spending," Brady concluded. "Time will tell whether these signs become a full-fledged trend. If they do not, the continued demand for increases in the federal budget will endanger efforts to reform the Tax Code and modernize Social Security, not to mention jeopardize vows by both Presidential candidates to cut the deficit in half."

NTUF is the research arm of the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union. NTUF Policy Paper 154, Ghosts of the Revolution, which includes individual BillTally reports for each Representative and Senator, is available online at www.ntu.org.

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Related Links:

• Click Here for NTUF's BillTally Report on the First Eighteen Months of the 108th Congress
• Click Here for More BillTally Information

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