Monday, January 28, 2008

Earmarks

Bush is expected to talk about cutting Congressional earmarks again in his State of the Union address. It's one thing I can agree with him on. I despise Congressional earmarks. Here's a neat little government website I just found from the Office of Management and Budget.

http://www.earmarks.omb.gov/

Among other things, it notes that in 2005, there was a total of $18billion in earmarks. There is a chart showing differences between the 2005 benchmark and the 2008 anticipated earmarks. At a glance, it doesn't look good.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Paul Kiel writing for Talking Points Memo's 'Must Read,' 1/29/08

"But Bush, the earmark president, the man who presided over and enabled the Republican Congress during the Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham scandals...he's decided that he's really going to bring the hammer down on the practice now that the Republicans no longer run Congress (actually not so much bring the hammer down as threaten to bring the hammer down right before he leaves office)."
He also quotes this from the NY Times:
"In the last seven years he has signed spending bills containing about 55,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion for projects...
Mr. Bush was notably silent on the subject until after his fellow Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections. And, now that his power has waned, his threats are almost certain not to matter."

www.talkingpointsmemo.com

Spideywhomper

5:58 PM

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