Earmarks: Obama, GOPers and Dems guilty as charged

I almost dropped my coffee cup this morning when I heard a pundit say Democrats and President Barack Obama are blaming President George W. Bush for overt costs in the massive Omnibus Spending bill. The Democrats have controlled Congress for almost 3 years, and Bush is probably enjoying his leisure time, glad to be done with what is probably the hardest job in the nation for any person. Obama can chide earmarks all he wants to. But if he’s truthful, he will own up to his own astounding earmarks success during one extremely brief tenure in the U.S. Senate.

Conservative and liberal media ignored questionable earmarks, one of which went to a defrocked priest whose organization helped the “most vulnerable” including children. Another earmark, $3 million strong, went for dance movement therapy. And drumroll, please, for an earmark Obama co-sponsored: $30 MILLION bucks for the National Writing Project. I’m a writer and I can say that is the biggest waste of $30 million taxpayer bucks I’ve seen yet. We already pay teachers to teach kids to write. You can read about the president’s earmarks at the Barack Obama website. And now for the loaded question: are earmarks constitutional?

The lucky duckies at The National Writing Project are laughing all the way to the bank, $33 MILLION of your taxpayer dollars in hand thanks to President Barack Obama and his earmark co-sponsors.
Look to the Citizens Against Government Waste website for facts on earmarks and how various administrations have justified them. In my opinion, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lied when he said earmarks have been around since George Washington. And two Republicans clouded the truth big-time as well. CAGW said, “[Former] Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) have argued that eliminating earmarks would equate to an unconstitutional delegation of spending discretion to the executive branch.”

CAGW responded, “It would be hard to imagine a more convoluted, inaccurate, and self-serving interpretation of the Constitution and U.S. history. The Founding Fathers deemed that Congress could only spend money in pursuant to those powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The 10th Amendment leaves all other responsibilities to the states. “

Earmarks, comrades, are a means of getting around normal appropriations procedures. And in my opinion they are breaking the bank because they continue to grow. Earmarks are a means of buying votes and rewarding lobbyists, period.

Americans for Prosperity has a history of earmarks on their website. AFP says, “Just take a look at the history of the Defense Appropriations Bill: Taxpayers for Common Sense calculated that the 1970 Defense Appropriations Bill had a dozen earmarks; the 1980 bill had 62 earmarks; and by 2005, the defense bill had skyrocketed to 2,671 earmarks.” And what are we up to now—approximately 9,000 in the Omnibus “Spendthrift Bill”?

American taxpayers should demand earmarks be banned. If we don’t we are exercising our own greed and saddling our children with a government that will take more than the current lion’s share of earnings. States are already moving towards total federal dominance. If this doesn’t worry you it should whether you’re a “rich” [nod to Obama] person, a welfare recipient or somewhere in between.

The GOP has abandoned fiscal conservatism and the Dems never had it to start with. A handful of Republicans and Democrats in Congress had the nerve to speak out about runaway spending. In my opinion, if the politicos want to spend, fine. They should cut something elsewhere from the budget. Isn’t that what we do when our income falls and our needs increase?

Obama cannot legitimately criticize anyone in Congress for earmarks. He may have set a world record for his own short tenure in the Senate. If we had real media dogging politicians, you'd have read this in an establishment media outlet.

It’s time to clean house in Washington. This Congress will ultimately harm our country in ways we cannot imagine. Remember that when election day rolls around. A politician may buy your vote with earmarks and rhetoric. And when you stand in a queue for government controlled healthcare, when we experience another natural disaster like Katrina, when we all pay higher prices for everything because of Obama’s plans for Cap and Trade, I’ll be glad to remind you I told you so.