Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, and Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Overland Park, were among eight House freshmen who announced with fanfare last week that they were offering unused portions of their office budgets totaling $1.4 million as a “gift” to reduce the $15 trillion national debt. “I was part of a freshman class that pledged to do better, pledged to do bigger,” Huelskamp said. To which Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank responded: “But ‘better’ and ‘bigger’ apparently were out of reach, so he returned $145,000 from his office kitty instead.” Milbank noted it’s routine for lawmakers to turn back office money, and that those doing so last week had secured no guarantee from House leadership that the money would actually go toward the debt. “It was another sign that the revolutionaries who were swept to power in the 2010 midterms with visions of transforming Washington had been reduced to the same type of small and symbolic measures that have occupied lawmakers for years. It was a tacit admission of lowered expectations,” Milbank concluded.
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