Mark Udall's "bridge to nowhere works fine -- if all the elk know where the crossing is."

What a great one-liner from Bob Schaffer on the campaign trail, as he highlights Mark Udall's low threshold for approving taxpayer-funded earmarks.

The Wall Street Journal's Brendan Miniter explains in his Political Diary:

Washington really is going to the animals. Rep. Mark Udall, a Democrat running for an open Senate seat in Colorado, is coming under fire for a $500,000 earmark to build an animal bridge. The funding would be seed money to construct a $10 million bridge over Interstate 70 so elk and large animals would, in theory, be able to cross the road without impeding traffic.

Miniter calls it a "bridge for nobody," providing a cute anecdote that by itself wouldn't mean much, except for the current mood of voters:

This year members of Congress are finding wasteful spending is a political liability.

That's bad news for Mark Udall. And good news for Bob Schaffer - one of the few true fiscal conservatives to serve in Congress in recent years.

Mark Udall: Consistent Taxpayer's Enemy vs. Bob Schaffer: Loyal Taxpayer's Friend

When it comes to his Congressional voting record on behalf of taxpayers, Mark Udall displays near perfect consistency: near-perfect consistent failure, that is. The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) released its 2007 rankings today, updating Udall's record. Here's the year-by-year breakdown for the Boulder liberal:
1999 - 22% (F)
2000 - 30% (F)
2001 - 14% (F)
2002 - 23% (F)
2003 - 33% (D)
2004 - 13% (F)
2005 - 16% (F)
2006 - 16% (F)
2007 - 5% (F)

A report card like this would be very bad news for most students. One D in 2003 hardly atones for the slate of Fs, the worst of which comes in 2007. Only voting with taxpayers 5% of the time? If Udall continues this trend, it's bad news for hard-working families and small businesses who pay taxes.

Mark Udall, the taxer-and-spender, has been in Washington too long. He needs some remediation, some time out of office back in Colorado.

The contrast with his Republican opponent Bob Schaffer could hardly be more stark:
1997 - 69% (A)
1998 - 82% (A)
1999 - 77% (A)
2000 - 81% (A)
2001 - 85% (A)
2002 - 63% (B+)

Clearly, NTU grades on a curve, because too often Congress does not vote in the best interests of taxpayers. But Bob Schaffer was one of the top 10 taxpayer-friendly members of Congress during four of his six years in Congress.

Kristina Rasmussen at the NTU blog has the skinny on which members of Congress distinguished themselves in 2007 - both in a good light and a not-so-good light.