By Dwight Filley

What is it about elected officials?

Why can't seemingly normal men and women, who cut their personal spending when they are low on funds, do the same thing with government spending. Is it some kind of secret brain ray that zaps them when they enter the capitol building? Or do they simply forget who sent them there?

Not that they are all bad, but they sure aren't all good either, because spending and taxes keep going up. So, how can you tell a thrifty, good legislator from a spendthrift, bad one?

Since most legislators spend much of their time trying to look good, we can't just take them at their word. They all constantly tell us how great they are, yet there is profound dissatisfaction with government.

We need a more objective standard.

A major criterion for a good legislator should be one who tries to control spending.

Controlling spending seems simple enough. All a lawmaker has to do is vote "no". But the realities of politics are more complex. If a politician votes no, the special interest whose ox he is goring instantly threatens him with defeat at the next election. This means that weak-willed politicians usually cave in and vote "yes". So spending keeps on going up.

There are a few legislative heroes, however, who do vote no, and who go further and actually propose spending cuts. These, then, are some of the good guys.

Colorado's Senator Hank Brown proved himself one of the good guys when he tired to kill the federal honey subsidy. This little boondoggle was only worth 12 million tax dollars, and was so outrageous that it was the only program that Clinton felt brave enough to promise to kill while he was campaigning for president. This was another promise Clinton has waffled on; so we still fork over our hard-earned dollars to bee keepers. As a result, every American still pays for honey at tax time, even though many people never even eat the stuff. Senator Brown made a good second effort to kill the honey subsidy, and although he failed, the effort still places him in the ranks of the good guys.

Not that a $12 million cut will balance the budget, but the symbolic value is there. We have to learn to walk before we can run; we have to become able to cut small programs before we can cut big ones.

At the local level, Rep. Penn Pfiffner (R-Lakewood) tried to kill a Colorado state aviation map that was duplicated by federal aviation maps and so was totally redundant. This would have saved less than $50,000, but it too is still being cranked out by Colorado bureaucrats, because other legislators couldn't muster the courage to say no.

Rep. Phil Pankey, (R-Littleton), tried to reduce the travel allowance we taxpayers give to legislators. A travel allowance makes sense for a rural lawmaker, who travels hundreds of miles across his huge district, but we taxpayers fork over a travel allowance to urban ones as well, even when driving across the district only takes ten minutes.

Thus Representatives Pfiffner and Pankey also learn the rank of good guys, alongside Senator Brown.

Note, however, that none of these eminently sensible cuts became law. Which only proves that most elected officials are the bad guys.

If we had more of these thrifty types and fewer compulsive big spenders, we would all have more faith in our government.

Dwight Filley is a senior fellow in market principles a the Independence Institute, a Golden think tank.