Mr. Sanford once carried two piglets onto the floor of the House chamber to symbolize his opposition to what he considered wasteful spending.
In an interview, Scott DesJarlais, a physician and the Republican challenger, highlighted Mr. Davis's vote for the stimulus package, which Mr. DesJarlais considers wasteful spending.
The earlier outcome drew criticism from lawmakers and watchdog groups who said the Senate was refusing to end a subsidy program widely considered wasteful and unnecessary.
If the budget squeeze forces Congress to cut back on what the administration considers wasteful or duplicative government programs to make room for Mr. Bush's initiatives, he said, all the better.
They succeeded in part, when the Pentagon's plans were scaled back, and through the years he kept up the fight to try to eliminate what he considered wasteful military spending.
"Much as we'd have liked to dramatise the Devil like Tim Curry in Legend, we were working with a budget where a character having a hat and gloves is considered wasteful and ostentatious".
Much of the expenditure on public works in the 1990s is now considered wasteful, so this time the focus is meant to be on projects that boost productivity, such as an expansion of Tokyo's Haneda airport.
In 1978, Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin, an outspoken critic of what he considered wasteful government spending, awarded one of his infamous "Golden Fleece" awards to the hunt for aliens, and in 1993, a NASA-sponsored survey for signals from 1,000 nearby stars was canceled by Congress.
In 2004, as governor, he let two piglets loose in the South Carolina state house as a protest against pork.Mr Sanford has vetoed hundreds of bills approved by the Republican-controlled legislature during his six years as governor, mostly over what he considered wasteful spending.
