Spending Bills Still Stuffed With Earmarks -- Democrats Had Vowed To Curtail Pet Projects
From The Washington Post:
The $555 billion annual "omnibus" spending bill approved by Congress this week and the $459 billion defense bill passed last month collectively contain more than 11,000 earmarks, despite Democrats' vow to use their first year in the majority to slash the number of such pet projects.
The House required lawmakers for the first time to sign their names on their earmarks, identify the beneficiaries and locations, and certify that neither they nor their immediate families have a financial stake in the spending. But Democrats' good intentions came undone in the Senate, which did not trim earmarks as severely and tinkered with the language of the rules, limiting disclosure only to the authors' names . . . .
The $555 billion annual "omnibus" spending bill approved by Congress this week and the $459 billion defense bill passed last month collectively contain more than 11,000 earmarks, despite Democrats' vow to use their first year in the majority to slash the number of such pet projects.
The House required lawmakers for the first time to sign their names on their earmarks, identify the beneficiaries and locations, and certify that neither they nor their immediate families have a financial stake in the spending. But Democrats' good intentions came undone in the Senate, which did not trim earmarks as severely and tinkered with the language of the rules, limiting disclosure only to the authors' names . . . .
posted by Sid Cottingham | 7:19 AM
1 Comments:
I think we've lost focus of the bigger picture by becoming entangled in a hopeless partisan, blame-game, and never-ending debate about the exact magnitude of pork barrel appropriations.
The fact of the matter is that earmarks are bad policy yet good politics. Every representative has the incentive to tack on his pet projects in order to boost his chances of reelection. All these party promises to curb pork barrel spending are pure rhetoric because nothing is being done to alter the incentives! The truth is that as long as the incentives to 'earmark' remain, this wasteful spending cannot be reduced or eliminated.
http://unremarkablepolitics.blogspot.com/
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