Reply #11: Okay, here's some REAL leadership from Pelosi [View All]

[Walt Starr]

Pelosi Leads the Way on Highway Bill Give-Back
by Andrew M. Grossman and Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.
WebMemo #852

September 21, 2005 | |



It is often said that politics makes strange bedfellows, but apparently hurricanes have far stranger effects. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced that she would offer up $70 million, out of the $129 million in highway bill earmarks that she won for her district, to offset the cost of the Katrina relief effort, surpassing the 50 percent target set in the Heritage Foundation’s initial highway bill "give-back" proposal. And on Wednesday, members of the House’s Republican Study Committee (RSC), a conservative group, made a similar pledge. RSC members including Reps. Mike Pence, Jeb Hensarling, and Jeff Flake, all known for their fiscal activism, matched Pelosi and offered up all earmarked projects as part of an RSC spending proposal that contains hundreds of billion in cuts.

These are bold proposals, especially considering the time and effort that Members of Congress put into securing earmarked highway bill projects and the favor that those projects curry back home. It should be no surprise, then, that many other Members are reluctant to give back anything. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whom we would have figured a more likely RSC bedfellow than Rep. Pelosi, seems “unenthusiastic” about returning transportation dollars to pay for rebuilding

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http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm852.cfm

If all the Democrats who won pork in the highway bill would do the same, the game would be up for the Republicans.