Anti-Earmark legislation fails Senate

[MenInTights]

Strong showing in anti-earmark vote - David Rogers - POLITICO.com

I'm proud of Jim DeMint and Tom Colburn who headed this and the 32 Republicans and 7 Democrats that supported it. Earmarks are hardly the solution to our debt problems, but is the very least thing that can be done. Shame on the 8 Republicans that voted no.

 

[KSpiceFantastic]

Shame on the Republicans that voted no, indeed. If it helps the economy, it is welcome in my eyes.

 

[SmilinSilhouette]

Shame on ALL the senators that voted no (mostly democrats)!

But look at the list of "republicans" who voted no: the usual suspects.

 

[MenInTights]

This is the list of Republicans:

Eight GOP senators voted to preserve earmark spending, including Thad Cochran (Miss.), Susan Collins (Maine), James Inhofe (Okla.), Dick Lugar (Ind.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Richard Shelby (Ala.). Retiring Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio) and defeated Sen. Bob Bennett (Utah) also voted against it.

Exactly. The usual suspects.
There's so many things that's sick about this. The Senators aren't so damn important that they can't bring every spending bill to the floor. That's what we pay them to do after all.

 

[ExpectantlyIronic]

It's pretty vogue to hate on earmarks, but they really do make up an insignificant amount of the federal budget. It's like calling for pay cuts or benefit reductions for Congressmen: not going to accomplish anything. Is it really so bad that the Federal government funds some projects aimed at helping various localities? Not by my thinking.

 

[CaptainObvious]

I agree with EI somewhat, I'm not completely against Earmarked. Certainly one could point to an example where some spending has gotten out of hand, but there are plenty of examples where earmarks have assisted some communities.

 

[MenInTights]

My Senator has operated under a self imposed an earmark ban almost since he's been in office and we're fine. I don't fully understand it, but there are ways to get money for roads, universities, etc by using appropriated money rather than tacking on a few hundred million to a bill. As I said earlier, its hardly a solution, but we didn't just wake up one day with a $14T debt. Its a move that would be much more significant than a pay decrease or benefits reduction as mentioned earlier.

 

[Wade8813]

It's pretty vogue to hate on earmarks, but they really do make up an insignificant amount of the federal budget. It's like calling for pay cuts or benefit reductions for Congressmen: not going to accomplish anything. Is it really so bad that the Federal government funds some projects aimed at helping various localities? Not by my thinking.

The problem is that so often, they don't really help the localities.

And while the bad ones are obviously a smaller part of the budget than all of them combined, they're really bad PR in a time when public distrust in our government is rampant.

Also, while these earmarks might not be a large percentage of the federal budget, that's only because the federal budget is so huge. They're still large amounts of money.

 

[ExpectantlyIronic]

And while the bad ones are obviously a smaller part of the budget than all of them combined, they're really bad PR in a time when public distrust in our government is rampant.

I'm just not a fan of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. MenInTights mentioned that there is, of course, other ways of passing these things; but do we really want Congressmen debating them all individually on the floor? I mean, that's time they could be wasting filibustering more important things.

 

[MenInTights]

Part of my disdain comes from living in Alaska for 10 years. There is a gross abuse of the earmark system there and you see it everywhere you turn. Washing DC even has a special name for the lobbyist that run the system: The Alaska Mafia: Murkowski's 'Alaska Mafia' and the public dole | Washington Examiner
I never understood until recently how friends of mine would routinely receive $5000 checks from their native corporations until I put it together that the entire state gets repaved every year and these corps own the construction companies. If every state operated like AK our republic would quickly die.