I think this quote sums up the accompliments of the Democrats

From the NY Times:

"I can’t wait to put out a press release to tell people what I have done."
SENATOR RICHARD J. DURBIN OF ILLINOIS, boasting of his $448 million in earmarks for the state in the budget Congress just approved.

House GOP force pork-laden bill back to committee

This is a smart move be Republicans and they would do well to continue to push the Democrats on this because it is a failure by the Democrats to follow through on their campaign promise:

House Republicans have been fighting and winning the few little battles they can, considering they are in the minority in a body where the minority has few rights. But tonight they won big on a motion to recommit the Intelligence Authorization Act to committee, with instructions to remove all earmarks from the bill.

This is one of many such little wins the House GOP has enjoyed, peeling off moderate and marginal-seat Democrats as they do so. The committee is not obligated to follow the instructions, but they can only ignore them if Democratic leaders are willing to ram the earmarks through, over a clear majority vote of the House.

If Republicans don't make this a campaign issue, they would prove they have no political sense. Ads that demonstrate the failure by the Democrats to curtail earmarks should be running in every district for months leading up to the election. This is a bigger issue than people realize since we all, Democrats, Republicans and Independents, are paying for things we do not need. It's really time for us to tell Congress to stop wasting out money.

Lott's Retirement

Good riddance!

Actually, federal legislators know how to build tidy nest eggs without spending one day in the private sector — none of them much better than Trent Lott. Except for one year as a practicing attorney fresh out of law school, Lott has spent his career on the public payroll — four years as a congressional staffer, 16 years in the House and 19 in the Senate. Nevertheless, the Center for Responsive Politics in 2005 calculated his net worth at between $1.4 million and $2 million, or 42nd among 100 senators. It put his annual income from the Senate and private sources at $289,710, in the top 1.5 percent of American income earners.

The Pork Database

I thought the Democrats had promised to end earmarks, what happened?

The anti-pork group Citizens Against Government Waste has released a handy database of all 2,243 earmarks in the Labor Health and Human Services appropriations bill that was vetoed by President Bush earlier this month. The spreadsheet organizes the earmarks by dollar amount, the project and indicates which lawmakers requested the money.

100,000 Strong for Earmark Reform

Senator Jim DeMint is trying to end earmarks and it's proving to be difficult since both parties are spending our money like teenagers at the mall with their parents' credit card. Democrats and Republicans can both get behind Senator Jim DeMint's efforts to end earmarks by signing his petition:



If you have trouble seeing the petition, go here.

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Budget bills contain $20 billion in pork!!!

The Republicans did not learn their lesson, they ignored the clear outrage of the Republican voters who stayed home instead of voting for them last November. I expect earmarks from the Democrats, but I'm getting tired of them from the Republicans. Do we have to raise up another party to get a representative who commits to not wasting the taxpayers' money?

The base is already demoralized, why push us further? These people really don't get it, do they?

It looks like Congress won’t even come close to giving up those irresistible earmarks.

Citizens Against Government Waste, which closely monitors federal spending, is putting the finishing touches on its tally of pork projects in the pending spending bills — and the picture isn’t pretty. The group estimates that there will be at least 8,000 earmarks this year, costing U.S. taxpayers, $18 billion to $20 billion.

Democrats and Republicans alike had promised to curtail the practice of directing money to specific projects.

They have, but not nearly as dramatically as their campaign rhetoric had suggested. In the last fiscal year, when Republicans controlled Congress, there were $29 billion in total earmarks.

Hippie Museum earmark removed

Looks like the hippies will have to find someone else to fund their museum. The Senate voted to remove Clinton and Schumer's earmark:

This month, in a mostly party-line 52-42 vote, Coleman voted with the majority to strip the $1 million earmark sought by New York Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, both Democrats. In another tie to the past, Coleman and Schumer attended high school together in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, just a few years before Woodstock.

The bridge to nowhere is now history

What took them so long to kill it?

Gov. Sarah Palin ordered state transportation officials Friday to abandoned the "bridge to nowhere" project that became a nationwide symbol of federal pork-barrel spending.

The $398 million bridge would have connected Ketchikan, on one island in southeastern Alaska, to its airport on another nearby island.

"Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer," Palin said in a news release.

She directed the transportation department to find the most "fiscally responsible" alternative for access to the airport.

[...]

Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young championed the project through Congress two years ago, securing more than $200 million for the bridge between Ketchikan, on Revillagigedo Island, and Gravina Island.

Under mounting political pressure over pork projects, Congress stripped the earmark — or stipulation — that the money be used for the airport, but still sent the money to the state for any use it deemed appropriate.

The state took much of that for other projects, and Palin said Friday the Ketchikan project was $329 million short of full funding.

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This is the problem with Congress, they take out the project but send the money anyway. Sheesh! No wonder they lost the Senate and the House.