George LeMieux

Erin McPike's article on the state of the 2012 Florida Senate race reveals Sen. George LeMieux -- appointed to the position by Gov. Charlie Crist following the resignation of Mel Martinez -- to be representative of everything wrong with Congress:

"From my time in Washington, I've seen that this place is dysfunctional. We're on the precipice of financial disaster," he said.

Pressed on what has surprised him most about serving in the Senate, he continued, "Typical senators who have been around here for decades just keep spending and running up trillions in debt.... They walk around here like it is normal. It's not normal. It's bizarre and it's broken."

...LeMieux and his team, however, are promoting four legislative accomplishments of the senator's in his short tenure. Among those are his efforts earlier this year on three parts of the small business bill: His work with Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu to get $30 billion in lending into it; his work with Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar on the Export Promotion Act, which bolsters the Department of Commerce in promoting exports; and his Medicare anti-fraud initiative, which adds predictive modeling to Medicare in the Department of Health and Human Services.

He also pushes an amendment in financial regulatory reform he authored with Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell that restructured standards of credit worthiness used by national credit ratings agencies.

The man is either a hypocrite or clueless. After castigating his fellow senators for a blasé attitude towards reckless spending, we then find out that half of the "accomplishments" being touted by the LeMieux camp are increases in government spending and interventions in the economy. In addition to the $30 billion in lending for small businesses -- currently experiencing a default rate of 12 percent -- the cost of the Export Promotion Act is rated at $248 million by the Congressional Budget Office.

Any more such LeMieux-style fiscal conservatism and we'll all be in the poor house.