If any of you managed to supress your gag reflex long enough to listen to President Obama's speech last night, you might have heard him talk about ruling out adding pet spending projects to budget legislation. Why then, is the first major bill penned under his presidency chopped full of 9,246 of those projects? Why then is the proposed budget full of 770 pages of earmarks? Why then is the omnibus legislation full of earmarks? And the worst part? It's not all the democrats, there are even a few RINO's adding to the pot.In addition to the basic operations of government the 1,000-plus-page spending bill includes hundereds of pages of earmarks - pet spending projects inserted by lawmakers, here is a small sampling courtesy of of Glenn Beck:
In the stimulus bill:
$185,000 for coral reef research and preservation in Maui County, Hawaii
$55,000 in meteorological equipment for Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Calif.
$9.9 million for science enhancement at historically black colleges in South Carolina.
In the proposed budget:
$764,000 for the Lake George Watershed Protection Initiative in New York, requested by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, New York Democrat;
$9.9 million for South Carolina's historically black colleges and universities, requested by House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, South Carolina Democrat;
$1.1 million requested by Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander and Sen. Bob Corker, both of Tennessee, for water treatment plant improvements in Tennessee's Unicoi County, as well as $300,000 for a sewer extension project in another county.
In the omnibus legislation:
$713,625 Woody Biomass at SUNY-ESF. Walsh and Schumer sponsors
$951,500 Sustainable Las Vegas. Berkeley and Reid sponsors.
$24,000 A+ for Abstinence. Specter is sponsor. $300,000 Montana World Trade Center. Rehberg sponsor.
$950,000 Myrtle Beach International Trade and Convention Center. Graham sponsor. $200,000 Oil Region Alliance. Peterson sponsor.
$190,000 Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY for digitizing and editing the Cody collection. Barbara Cubin is the sponsor
$143,000 Las Vegas Natural History Museum, Las Vegas, NV, to expand natural history education programs. Sponsored by Harry Reid
$238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, Honolulu, HI, for educational programs. Sen. Daniel Inouye is the sponsor.
$381,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York, NY for music education programs. Jerrold Nadler is the sponsor.
Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, would spend $3.8 million on a Needles, Calif., highway.
Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the top Republican on Senate Appropriations, backs earmarks including a $950,000 nature education center in Moss Point, Miss. He defends earmarks.
3 comments:
With all due respect, I'd like to share my opinion. :) I saw this interesting blog post a while back saying why Reds and Blues don't mix: There are certain things only Red states experience, therefore they think those are priority, and ditto with those in the Blue states. That's one of the reasons why the Democrat-dominated legislations are very much opposed by the Republicans. Now Obama, I think, is trying his best to bridge the two but as of now it's almost to no avail. Oh well.
Two questions. What of those states that are neither blue nor red, and have representatives from both sides of the isle? Second, what is Obama doing to unite the two sides? And please, no platitudes.
I think its pork depending on where someone is from. I'm from Hawaii and I don't believe the research for coral reefs is necessarily pork.
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