Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) has a reputation for being a “deficit hawk.” But the bar is apparently so low in Washington that merely paying lip service to “fiscal responsibility” is enough to earn you the hawk title in the press. In reality, Conrad is a tax and spender as a story in today’s Wall Street Journal demonstrates.

These examples illustrate Sen. Deficit Hawk’s commitment to deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility:

• “Like many in Congress, he is conflicted. He boasts a 23-year record of looking after North Dakota voters with ample farm subsidies, aid for drought-hit ranchers, defense spending and scores of pet projects. He has done little to help rein in Medicare and Social Security expenses—the U.S.’s biggest budget busters.”

• “He has been a defender of the state’s grain farmers ever since [his election to the Senate in 1986]. He voted last April against a proposal to cap federal payments to the nation’s farmers at $250,000 per farmer per year, a measure that Mr. Conrad criticized as disastrous but that supporters said would have saved $1 billion a year.”

• “He also helped draft a five-year, $300 billion farm bill in 2008 that boosted overall farm subsidies. The bill created a $3.8 billion emergency ‘trust fund’ for farmers who lose crops or livestock to natural disasters, which was Mr. Conrad’s idea. Since 2008, North Dakota ranchers have received $23 million under the fund, second only to Texas.”

• “Mr. Conrad also has used legislative earmarks—provisions inserted into bills by lawmakers to fund local projects—to deliver federal money to North Dakota businesses, cities and schools. He secured $3 million last year to build a new terminal at the Grand Forks airport, and $13 million more for a fire station at a nearby air base. Dickinson State University got $600,000 to build a Theodore Roosevelt Center, while a Navy research project got $1.2 million to develop a ‘chafing protection system.’ ”

• “In 2003, Mr. Conrad joined most Democratic senators to support Mr. Bush’s plan to provide Medicare prescription-drug coverage to seniors, at a cost of around $40 billion a year. The plan required Congress to scrap the spending controls Mr. Conrad once championed. Republicans won the votes of Mr. Conrad and other rural senators by agreeing to expand the program by pumping $25 billion more into rural hospitals and doctors over 10 years.”

• “Mr. Conrad helped negotiate the 2005 highway bill, which critics blasted as a bipartisan exercise in spending excess. The $286 billion bill contained 6,371 earmarks. Even before Mr. Bush signed it, Mr. Conrad told constituents that the bill would deliver $1.5 billion to North Dakota communities. ‘That equates to North Dakota receiving $2 for every $1 in gas tax collected in the state,’ Mr. Conrad said in a news release.”

It would appear that Conrad doesn’t really want to cut spending to rein in deficits. He wants to increase taxes. One might think a proponent of tax increases in a red state like North Dakota would struggle at the ballot box. However, the Wall Street Journal article cites Tax Foundation data showing that North Dakota receives $1.68 in federal spending for every $1 it sends to Washington in taxes. In other words, Conrad’s tax increases would allow him to buy more votes at the expense of taxpayers in other states.  A North Dakotan is quoted as saying, “The joke here is that we elect conservatives to state office because we don’t want them to spend our money, and liberals to national office because we want them to spend other people’s money.”

This is a precisely why a return to fiscal federalism is crucial to getting spending-driven deficits under control. In the meantime, let’s stop calling politicians who want to spend more money and increase taxes to pay for it “deficit hawks” or “fiscally responsible.”

The 2009 stimulus bill gave the U.S. Department of Transportation $50 billion to distribute to the states for highways, roads, and bridges. A House bill passed in December would add another $28 billion. According to Washington folklore, spending on infrastructure is always good because it’ll create jobs and spur economic growth. However, three recent examples are a reminder that the government often does a poor job of allocating resources.

First, an Alaska legislative audit concluded that the state should not have spent federal transportation money building a road to the site of the proposed “Bridge to Nowhere,” which was canceled after a national outcry. Alaska kept the federal money originally earmarked for the bridge, and then-Governor Sarah Palin agreed to spend $26 million of it on the road despite the fact there was no bridge.

Second, the Department of Transportation is supposed to exclude “unethical, dishonest, or otherwise irresponsible” parties from receiving federal funds. But according to a report from DOT’s inspector general, the average case took DOT officials “300 days to reach a suspension decision and over 400 days to reach a debarment decision.” For example, Kentucky awarded $24 million in transportation stimulus money to companies with officials under review by the Federal Highway Administration for bribery, theft, and obstruction of justice. The FHA took 10 months to review the companies before ultimately suspending them, but Kentucky had already given the companies the money.

Third, a Tennessee television station analyzed the state’s use of federal transportation stimulus money and found that it “spent an average of $161,500 per job created and that some paving jobs, which were temporary, cost taxpayers more than $1 million each.” The station interviewed a construction company that had been busy during the summer when it had federal money. Now its trucks are idle and the workers it hired have all been laid off.

Randal O’Toole says that “The best test of infrastructure value is whether users are willing to pay for it.” There’s almost no connection between infrastructure projects funded by federal taxpayers and the typically local users. Leaving infrastructure projects to state and local governments to fund would make more of a connection. Privatization, which would utilize tolling and other user fees, would be even better.

Andrew Coulson has already touched on this, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents. “Race to the Top Fund” guidelines were released today and they should please no reformers. They are simultaneously too weak, and way too much.

They are too weak because they don’t require states to actually do anything of substance. Have plans for reform? Sure. Break down a few barriers that could stand in the way of decent changes? That’s in there, too. But that’s about it. And the money is supposed to be a one-shot deal – once paper promises are accepted and the dough delivered, the race is supposed to be over.

In light of those things, how is this more appropriately labeled the Over the Top Fund than the Race to the Top Fund? Because while not requiring anything, it tries to push unprecedented centralization of education power.It calls for state data systems to track students from preschool to college graduation. It calls for states to sign onto “common” – meaning, ultimately, federal – standards. It tries to influence state budgeting.

In other words, it attempts to further centralize power in the hands of ever-more distant, unaccountable bureaucrats rather than leaving it with the communities, and especially parents, the schools are supposed to serve – exactly what’s plagued American education for decades. And, of course, it does this with huge  gobs of federal money taxpayers have no choice but to supply.