I came to Congress to help reduce spending.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In Congress, I was a relentless advocate for fiscal responsibility.
When I ran for Congress I promised to help make health care affordable again.
The Spending Control Act. It would recreate President Reagan's grace commission to have a bipartisan commission on how we reduce spending.
As I have traveled throughout my Congressional district, the one thing I heard loud and clear was simply please stop spending money you do not have, rein in spending, live within a budget.
I came to Washington with a pledge to be a fiscally conservative.
Well, I'm going to try to make a real difference in Washington's spending patterns.
I continue to vote against such spending increases, but sometimes I think some of my Republican colleagues forgot that we were sent here to shrink the federal government, not to grow it.
I put myself and all the members of Congress in the same boat of things that could have been done better.
When I left Washington, we actually had a balanced budget and we paid down the most amount of the national debt in modern history and cut taxes and created jobs. And I was the chief architect of that plan in '97.
As governor, I cut $5 billion in spending.