71 Senate 'Nays' for a moratorium on earmarks. Why don't they

[Obamanaut]

want to discuss openly what our money is being spent on? And why don't they want to hold off spending some of it for a year? Did they not get the memo that the economy is in the crapper, and we might not want them spending those billions? I want a president who will veto all the earmarks - all.

http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=news_porkerofthemonth


<snip>Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named all 71 senators who voted against an amendment to impose a one-year earmark moratorium in the fiscal year 2009 Budget Resolution March Porkers of the Month. The amendment was offered by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and had fourteen bipartisan co-sponsors including all three presidential candidates <snip>

<snip>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opposed the ban as “unrealistic” and even went so far as to erroneously claim that earmarking “has been going in this country for 230-some-odd years,” and that “The Founding Fathers would be cringing to hear people talking about eliminating earmarks.”

To the contrary, the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves right now to hear their legacy so completely distorted. In 1796, Thomas Jefferson predicted the slippery slope of the federal government funding local road projects when he said, “it will be a scene of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest.” In 1822, President James Monroe argued that federal money should be limited “to great national works only, since if it were unlimited it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil.”<more>

[bluestateguy]

1. I don't give a shit about earmarks

A hell of a lot more money is pissed away every day in Iraq than on these minuscule projects.

And John McCain has a real tendency to latch on to these issues that are only the concern of the Georgetown Cocktail Party crowd and newspaper editorial boards. Ordinary people lose very little sleep over earmarks.

[malaise]

2. May earmarks are spent on critical infrastructure

Fuck George bush.

[ThomWV]

3. Earmarks do not increase federal spending, they direct it.

First there has to be an agency and it has to have a budget and the budget has to be divided into programs - what earmarks do is define with some certainty who some or all of those funded by those programs will be. Usually its only a small part of a program's money that is directed to a source, but that doesn't increase the budget cost at all.

[Greyhound]

4. The line item veto was ruled unconstitutional back when Raygun tried it.

The President can only veto a whole bill and none of them has the will to fight for what is right.

It is imperative that the citizens of the US realize that political parties and elections are simply facades to maintain an illusion of choice. There is only one real issue and that is class. Just as something like 90% of Americans identify themselves as 'middle-class', almost all of us believe that, despite all evidence and common sense, "someday it will be my turn", so they allow the atrocity to continue.

[Obamanaut]

5. $17 billion is a helluva no bid award, isn't it?

I am truly puzzled as to why there is little or no interest in earmarks, and the curtailment of same. It seems like only yesterday there was a great hue and cry about the no-bid contracts awarded for cleaning up after Katrina, for various contract services in Iraq and other war areas, and now I find that circumventing the merit-based or competitive allocation process is acceptable. Perhaps I have the wrong outlook. Even though a few billion dollars pales in comparison to the funding for the war effort, to me that is still a pile of money. But that’s just me.

I am further confused because there is currently a flood of inquiries about Senator Clinton’s earmarks (many of which can be found by searching ‘Hillary Clinton earmark’), and why she does not disclose them. If they don't really matter, then what difference does it make re disclosure?


http://earmarks.omb.gov/

Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds. Congress includes earmarks in appropriation bills - the annual spending bills that Congress enacts to allocate discretionary spending - and also in authorization bills.