Are You Kidding Me?

New Senate Minority Leader Allan Kittleman (R-9) issued an amazing statement today decrying the Governor’s upcoming spending cuts. You have to read this to believe it.

According to PolitickerMD, Kittleman said this about the cuts:

Governor O'Malley's proposal to now cut one-quarter billion dollars from a budget only three months old will wreak havoc to state employees and those who depend upon state services for their livelihood.

Many liberals might agree with such a statement. The problem is that Allan Kittleman himself would disagree with it – at least, before he apparently became a liberal.

Way back in 2002, when Kittleman was running for a Howard County Council seat, he offered this view on government spending to The Business Monthly:

I support a smaller government that lives within its means. I firmly oppose increasing property or income tax rates. I would make up budget shortfalls by reducing expenditures in areas that are not primary functions of government and by eliminating government waste.

Once he was in the Maryland Senate, Kittleman opposed the special session’s tax increases and advocated spending restraint. Capital News Service reported his views before the special session began:

Kittleman said Maryland has “a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” noting that state revenues continue to increase "1 to 2 percent a year.

The Senate minority whip believes the state should simply limit its spending to the receipts it collects.

“If you can't afford your mortgage, don't build a garage,” he said.

Kittleman advocated spending restraint again according to the Baltimore Daily Record:

Republicans on Tuesday called for O'Malley to revisit local aid when dealing with the budget deficit. Senate Minority Whip Allan H. Kittleman, R-Carroll and Howard, said the deficit could be solved by slowing state spending increases.

“We can frankly resolve this problem not by having tax increases and not by cutting any programs,” he said.

Kittleman then joined a lawsuit to overturn the special session’s tax package that was subsequently thrown out. One of the principle objections by the plaintiffs to the special session, of course, was that it focused on tax increases and not on spending cuts.

After all this, Kittleman is now worried that spending cuts will “wreak havoc to state employees and those who depend upon state services for their livelihood.” So is the Senate Minority Leader a liberal, a conservative or someone who cannot make up his mind? You decide!