House Republicans approved a conference-wide moratorium on earmarks on Thursday, one day after a House committee enacted a ban on for-profit earmarks.
The Republicans’ moratorium is more extensive than the House Appropriations Committee’s ban in that it applies to all earmarks for all members of the caucus.
via House GOP votes to ban all earmarks - The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.
A year ago today, Seattle taxpayers organized an unprecedented protest of the pork-stuffed, generational theft stimulus bill that President Obama rammed down America’s throat.
via Michelle Malkin » Anniversary of a porkulus protest: The roots of the Tea Party movement.
If they are not willing to give them up, they do not and should not regain the majority in Congress.
Source: David Freddoso
Fred Thompson ‘08
Good for him.
Now of course the morons on the other side will try and make the case that this veto is all political. But, that is the case for them. Bush is simply making a statement with this veto of Congress’ pork barrel spending.
Congress overrode the veto on the Water Resources Development Act that Bush vetoed because of all of the pork in the bill.
As clearly put forth here by Council for Citizens Against Government Waste:
The spending levels in H.R. 1495 are excessive. The final conference report of $23 billion was far more than the $14 billion and $15 billion price tags the Senate and House recommended in each of their respective bills and $18.1 billion more than the president requested. The final bill includes several pork projects that are outside of the mission of the Corps of Engineers, transfers billions of dollars in costs from non-federal projects to taxpayers, and adds to the backlog of projects already in the pipeline.
The conference report also contained numerous pork-barrel projects which were “air-dropped” in at the last minute, well after the House and Senate had voted on their respective versions. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) attempted to challenge $2 billion worth of earmarks that were added in conference, but was rebuffed because Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) interpretation of the new transparency and accountability rules permits senators to add pork with impunity to authorization bills such as WRDA.
In the source article for this post, nothing is mentioned as to why Bush vetoed the bill in the first place. But hey, no surprise about that.
Just remember, even though it may be a day late and a dollar short, Bush did try and get the fools in Congress to change it. But, sometimes I guess the smell of pork is too overwhelming.
Well it appears the President Bush is going to spend his last months in office, vetoing his his ass off.
In the words of Martha Stewart, It’s a good thing.
It started out on the House side at 14 billion and on the Senate side at 15 billion. After it made it out of committee it was 23 billion dollars.
Simply amazing.
Source: Vetoing The Flood Of Pork
Freshman Congress Folks are the best Congressional Folks. With the exception of having absolutely no power to get anything done. That is because all of the Senior Congressional Folks hold power over everything that is need to get anything done. That is all fine and well except when it comes to these Senior Congressional Folks becoming so drunk on power and corrupt to the point of criminality. Thinking that their sway over budgets funded with taxes forced to be paid by the citizens by the rule of law, that they use these budgets as their own personal piggy bank.
Then comes the promises by these Congressional Folks every two years that they are going to be the ones to clean it up. That never happens. They rarely ever get booted out of office by the voter. Only when the corruption gets to the point that the justice department is forced to do something. That usually only ever comes when no one in Congress has the nerve to stop it, because it is so bad that every member of Congress does their best to deny they ever new the member.
So who do we have to blame for all of this. Only ourselves.
Thanks to our federal and state constitutions, we have the ultimate authority and blame for this corruption. So to make it clear, it is us that are corrupt. For it is our Congressional Leaders that we send to Houses of Congress to do our bidding and to be our proxy.
I only wish that I could be shocked and amazed by this.
Don Surber has the details.
Senator Ted “Pork King” Stevens and Rep. Don “Can’t get Enough” Young, sadly both Republicans, seem to be catching some heat from their constituents back home.
Captain Ed has it covered with this nice post: No Cold Turkey On Alaskan Pork
Sadly with the democrats in control of congress, it is unlikely that anyone on their side of the isle will receive as much attention as Republicans will for earmarks. Those democrats like Reid and Murtha to name two. But the Republicans had there chance to add transparency to the process when they where in the majority and blew it.
Sadly still, the democrats are not doing anything of substance to make it any better.
For sometime now a lot of bloggers have been trying to open up the files and make transparent the legislation of where all the earmarks are going, who’s requesting it and who is getting it. All the bloggers are asking for is, give transparency a chance. The congress does not even have to give up the dependency on pork, just make it open for public view so that we can see how our money is being spent. Place it all in a database like you said you were going to do and let us see it.
From Fred Thompson’s Fred File: Real Earmark Reform Needed
During the last elections, the House Democrats’ campaign chief, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, was clear as a bell on earmarks. “For far too long,” he said, “business as usual has involved individual members doling out favors in appropriations and other bills through earmarks. The American people deserve to know more than who sponsored special interest legislation. They deserve earmark reform that puts an end to special interest earmarking and provides solutions to prevent the practice of earmark abuse.”
As a Republican, I was glad. It’s not that earmarks are inherently bad. Some serve important public purposes. But they need to be in the open, for all to see and evaluate, and their use needs to be significantly limited.
In January, the House and Senate both separately passed earmark reform but didn’t quite follow through, leaving the final wording to conference committee. As the last session ended, we finally saw the bill, worked out in secrecy by the current leadership. Republican Sen. Tom Coburn got it right when he said it “not only failed to drain the swamp, but gave the alligators new rights.”
My “wish he was my representative” Mike Pence scored 100%, my actual “who I did not vote for” representative Julia Carson scored a big fat goose egg 0%.
Club for Growth Releases 2007 RePORK Card
Even though the Democratic majority vowed to return Congress to a path of fiscal responsibility, the 2008 appropriations bills were stuffed with wasteful pork projects. While Representatives John Campbell, Jeff Flake, Jeb Hensarling, Scott Garrett, and David Obey (1 amendment) offered 50 amendments to strip outrageous pork projects from the appropriations bills, only one amendment, offered by Rep. Jeff Flake, passed.
The Club for Growth has compiled a RePORK Card of all members’ votes on all 50 anti-pork amendments (see below). “Taxpayers have a right to know which congressmen stand up for them and which stand up for the special interests,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “Unfortunately, the Club for Growth RePORK Card shows that most congressmen care more about lining their buddies’ pockets than they care about protecting American taxpayers.”
Yep, that sounds about right. Don’t trust a word that comes out of their mouth and question every action they take.
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