WSJ profile on Haley Barbour cutting the budget

State Tests Limits of Spending Cuts

JACKSON, Miss.—Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour hailed the Republican wave at the polls this month as a sign that voters want politicians who can cut spending and reduce taxes.

It’s just the kind of image that Mr. Barbour is trying to cultivate as he weighs a run for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

“Anyone who says there isn’t a part of state government that can’t save money doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Mr. Barbour told his fellow governors at the Republican Governors Association meeting in San Diego on Thursday. “There is no department—the highway patrol, the crime lab, the highway department—that can’t save money.”

Wall Street Journal
11/22/10