Tag Archives: Pork Barrel

News

Senate Democrats reject Republican’s bill to ban earmarks

1 Comment

From The Hill. (H/T ECM, Marathon Pundit)

Excerpt:

The Senate on Tuesday morning defeated a proposal from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to ban congressional earmarks.

In a 39-56 vote, members defeated a temporary ban on the appropriations procedure. The moratorium was offered as an amendment to a food-safety bill that is scheduled for a final vote Tuesday morning.

Senate Republicans have already passed a voluntary ban on earmarks in their caucus, but several GOP senators have objected to it. Democrats have so far declined to ban earmarks from their members.

The legislation would have established an earmark moratorium for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, and also would have covered the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Congress has yet to pass an appropriations bill for the current fiscal year, and in the lame-duck session lawmakers are likely to approve either an omnibus spending bill or a continuing resolution to keep the government operating.

In speeches on Monday, Coburn said the ban was the only way to rein in out-of-control spending. He did not speak on Tuesday morning, but Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who supports the ban, alluded to the issue in remarks about the current debate over tax cuts.

“Republicans have heard the voters loud and clear,” McConnell said. “They want us to focus on preventing a tax hike on every taxpayer, on reining in Washington spending and on making it easier for employers to start hiring again.”

But Democrats repeated the argument they laid out in floor speeches on Monday, asserting that the earmark process has already been made transparent.

“We have put in place the most dramatic reform of this appropriations process since I’ve served in Congress,” said Majority Whip and Appropriations Committee member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “There is full disclosure in my office of every single request for an appropriation. We then ask those who have made the requests to have a full disclaimer of their involvement in the appropriation, so it’s there for the public record. This kind of transparency is virtually unprecedented.”

It’s going to be business as usual until we take the Senate in 2012.

News

AFL-CIO union boss says that there is no budget deficit problem

4 Comments

Here’s the video from Gateway Pundit.

Ooops:

I wonder how the union boss missed that graph.

And when you look at that graph remember that the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate starting in January of 2007. When things started to fall apart, and Bush didn’t have the political capital to pull out his veto pen and cut wasteful spending and bailouts.

Michele Bachmann doesn’t like unions

Anyway, here’s Michele Bachmann explaining what the 26 billion dollar union bailout will mean for the November elections. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

That’s why government should be limited. You only get to choose how to spend your money in a free market. If the government takes your money, then they get to decide how it’s spent, e.g. – on special interest groups that voted for the party in power. A dollar is either going to be spent by you on what you want – or it’s going to be spent by them on what they want. Think about it – who knows more about what to do with YOUR money – you or a politician who wants to be re-elected? The only solution is to keep government small – and only the Republicans (some of them – not all) are willing to try to do that.

News

Veronique de Rugy shows that stimulus money was allocated for political gain

1 Comment
Veronique de Rugy

Story here on National Review. (H/T The Other McCain via ECM)

Excerpt:

As it turns out, when controlling for state capitals and a host of other potentially relevant variables, we find that the original findings still hold. We learn a few other things, too:

  • First, how and where the money is spent doesn’t seem to be related to unemployment or decline in employment in the district where it is spent.
  • Second, the district’s party affiliation matters in where the money is spent. (We still don’t know how much it matters compared to other factors.) The average Democratic district receives 81 percent more than the average Republican district. Even after taking out the money spent through state capitals, the average Democratic district receives at least 30 percent more than the average Republican district.
  • Third, whether a district has part of a state capital in it is an important factor in how stimulus money is spent. However, controlling for this factor, or even taking the money going to state capitals out altogether, doesn’t negate the finding that the district’s party affiliation matters in where the money is spent.
  • Finally, how long the district’s representative has been in office seems to have a small but significant impact on how the money is spent (this is a new finding, as well).

There is still much more to learn on the question “How are stimulus funds being spent and why?”

The more I dig into this, the more important the question seems.

George Mason University is a pretty moderate school, but they boast a fine conservative economics department. Jennifer Roback Morse used to teach there, and Walter Williams still does. It’s probably the best place for a conservative or libertarian student to do an economics degree.

Now seems like a good time to re-post Michele Bachmann’s denunciation of gangster government, too.

Michelle Malkin calls them Corruptocrats. It fits.

Related posts