GOP hates earmarks — except the ones its members sponsor

[babylonsister]

GOP hates earmarks — except the ones its members sponsor

By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — Republicans are expected to deliver a daylong rant Wednesday against Democratic spending legislation, yet the bill is loaded with thousands of pet projects that Republican lawmakers inserted.

Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, included $142,500 for emergency repairs to the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., joined state colleagues to include $1.425 million for Nevada "statewide bus facilities." The top two Republicans on Congress' money committees also inserted local projects.

In all, an estimated $3.8 billion worth of specific projects, called "earmarks," are in the $410 billion spending bill that the House of Representatives is to vote on Wednesday. Easy passage is expected. The Senate is expected to act soon, too, since federal agencies will run out of money a week from Friday unless new funds are enacted.

House Democrats estimate that Republicans inserted 40 percent of the earmarks in the bill. An independent budget watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the 60-40 Democratic-Republican ratio followed historical patterns.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/62742.html

[Beartracks]

1. That's typical Republican philosophy:

Judge something based not on its merit, but on the party of its sponsor.

For that matter, if you told a Republican some ghastly story about a legislator who was accused of, say, molesting children, and told this Republican all about how the press was persecuting the legislator in the "court of public opinion", and all about how the legislator's spouse was defending the legislator while simultaneously cheating on him/her, and all about the emotional battering the legislator took as a child, and all about the sex addiction of the spouse... the Republican would WANT to make some kind of moral judgments, but would be completely unable to do so until you identified the party affiliation of the legislator. :eyes:

[Thothmes]

2. Didn't the President of the United States

say that he was going to put a break on the entire ear mark process. My understanding that this bill has 9000 ear mark items it it. Forty percent of earmarks are from Republican legislators. All that means is that sixty percent of the ear marks are from Democratic legislators. The whole system needs to be overhauled. Every line item of expenditure of the taxpayers money needs to be visible to the light of day and to all the American electorate. JMO.