One of the biggest tea party battles in the US is unfolding in Alaska, where Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller is taking a tough line on Federal spending.<\/p>\n
The reason that this has national resonance is that Miller’s state is the biggest pork-devouring behemoth in the U.S., gobbling up roughly twice as much tax money per capita compared with the national average.<\/p>\n
Here’s a shocking fact.\u00a0 If we simply cut Alaska’s feeding frenzy down to the amount that most states receive, it would save the Federal treasury $50,000,000,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Yes, that’s roughly $50 billion dollars in annual savings.<\/p>\n
Two things make this boondoggle more egregious.<\/p>\n
First, Alaskans pay no income tax and in fact receive more than $1,000 a year in direct cash payments from the state.<\/p>\n
Rather than pay for a fair share of their own government needs, they ask that taxpayers in other parts of the Union foot the bill.<\/p>\n
But the other irritant is the fact that Alaskans still insist on describing themselves as libertarians and small-government champions.<\/p>\n
Even as they hoover up the juiciest morsels from the national trough, they toss around Sarah Palin-style rhetoric about bootstraps and independence.<\/p>\n
Normally, I would say that Joe Miller is the perfect antidote to this kind of over-reliance on Federal spending.<\/p>\n
With the help of voters, he pushed aside Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the most accomplished pork-purveyors in Washington.<\/p>\n