Noem Values Cheap Airplane Tickets over Food for Poor, Controls for Wall Street

Last updated on 2012.07.28

Rep. Kristi Noem continues to defy the conservative label. She continues to support big government subsidies for services that benefit her personally. Her latest favorite liberal spending: increased funding for rural airports that the free market cannot support:

Tea party lawmakers from rural areas were among those fighting the hardest to preserve taxpayer subsidies for airline flights into and out of small towns last year after senior Republicans tried to eliminate the oft-criticized program. Now, the House Appropriations Committee is awarding the program an 11 percent budget hike.

Next year, the subsidies would reach a record $214 million under a bill the GOP-run committee approved Tuesday.

...Last year, the House voted to eliminate the program in the lower 48 states by 2013. But rural tea party lawmakers like Reps. Rick Berg, R-N.D., and Kristi Noem, R-S.D., were among those who fought to save it.

...The subsidies increase approved Tuesday came as the panel also moved to cut food aid to poor nations overseas and funding for implementing new Wall Street regulations [Andrew Taylor, "House Panel Boosts Rural Air Service Subsidies," Washington Times, 2012.06.19].

Again, the media miss the point labeling Noem "Tea Party." She's not Tea Party. She's Me Party. Recall that Rep. Noem has consistently fought for big Essential Air Service subsidies for the economically unsustainable Watertown airport that sits just 19 miles from her house. That's consistently as in regularly doing it, not as in following her stated principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility. The only consistent principle here is that Kristi thinks government assistance for her family is more important than helping the poor eat or keeping Wall Street shysters from eating us.

For Pete's sake, Republicans: if you want a Democrat, why not just vote for a Democrat?

Update 2012.06.28 15:55 CDT: Rep. Noem and 76 other Republicans joined 161 Democrats in killing an amendment that would have cut $114 million from the EAS's $214 million budget. Amendment sponsor Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) said ending this "lavish subsidy should have been an easy call:

A reporter recently investigating this waste took one of these flights from Ely Nevada and was the only passenger on the flight. Our constituents paid $1.8 million for this air service that carried just 227 passengers during the entire year! Ely is a three and a half hour drive from Salt Lake City International Airport.

Thief River Falls, Minnesota is considered an Essential Air Service airport, despite the fact it is just an hour and nine minutes drive to Grand Forks International Airport in North Dakota. Hagerstown is just 75 miles from Baltimore, but subsidizing their flights is considered an "Essential Air Service."

...Apologists for this wasteful spending tell us it is an important economic driver for these small towns &ndash and I'm sure that's so &ndash whenever you give away money, the folks you're giving it to are always better off. But the folks you're taking it from are always worse off to exactly the same extent. Indeed, it is economic drivers like this that have driven Greece's economy right off a cliff.

...This was a temporary program set up when we deregulated commercial aviation. It was supposed to last a few years to give rural communities a chance to adjust. That was 34 years ago [Rep. Tom McClintock, "Essential Air Service," U.S. House, 2012.06.26].

Just more proof Kristi Noem isn't serious about reducing government spending... not when it benefits her personally.