GOP Rep. Spends Thousands In Taxpayer Dollars To Promote... Less Government Spending

WASHINGTON — Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) fashions himself as a champion of cutting government spending and promoting fiscal responsibility. The vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee, Schweikert regularly rails against excessive spending.

“You see tax receipts are up, but our spending is way up,” he said in an animated House floor speech in late July about the need for fiscal stability. “We’re spending faster than those receipts are going up. Therefore, you get a deficit.”

“We have been borrowing and spending too much for decades,” Schweikert wrote in a July op-ed for The Hill. “The inability to get our fiscal house in order and implement even a semblance of fiscal restraint has led us to where we are today.”

It’s basically all the guy talks about. His congressional website is full of press releases complaining about the debt and excessive spending. He shares posts on social media decrying the government’s “wasteful spending spree.” In August 2020, he boasted that he’d even won an award for his efforts to promote fiscal responsibility.

“It wasn’t the debt ceiling! It was the failure of this body to take our demographics, our spending, seriously!” Schweikert fumed in one House floor speech in March 2023 , referring to what caused the U.S. credit rating to be downgraded in 2011. (In fact, Congress’ failure to raise the debt ceiling amid extreme partisan gridlock is what led to the downgrade.)

But a look at Schweikert’s own spending shows he himself has been using lots of taxpayer money to send official mail and communications lately — an uptick that coincides with his congressional seat becoming more competitive. And ironically, many of his taxpayer-funded mailers are about combating “fiscal recklessness” and