Stop me before I spend again!

Rep. Scott Jensen recently joined the chorus of Republicans singing the same tune of "stop me before I spend again" with his release praising the unveiling of the Bride of Tabor. In his release he says:

The intent of the “Taxpayer Protection Amendment” is very simple –bring government spending in line with our families’ ability to pay.

This from the guy that was Speaker of the Assembly for years and now sits on the committee that writes the state budget. Rep. Jensen IS government spending. He has had more control over government spending in the last decade than almost any other person in this state. If he wanted lower government spending, why didn't he just do it in the last five or so state budgets?

Rep. Jensen was elected Speaker of the Assembly back in 1997 and was given a seat on the Joint Finance Committee after he was Speaker so surely in all that time he has been able to reduce state spending right? Let's see what the overall state spending levels have been according to the Blue Book:

1998 - $21,581,264
1999 - $22,963,154
2000 - $26,444,639
2001 - $28,167,758
2002 - $31,644,122
2003 - $31,982,230
2004 - $33,893,733

Well what do you know, it hasn't went down at all since Rep. Jensen has been in control. It was close in 2003. What happened that year? Oh yeah, Governor Doyle, a Democrat, introduced a budget to get rid of the deficits created by the Republicans and tried to save them from themselves.

Rep. Jensen and the rest of the supporters of TABOR-like amendments like to tell people that we need to stop Democrats from spending too much. But the spend into deficit Republicans have been far more damaging to our state since the Republican 'revolution' of 1994.