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by Don Azarias
January 1, 2011
With their days in control of the House numbered and a consequently slim majority in the Senate, the Democrats, with a little help from a handful of Republicans, fought tooth and nail to push through the $1.27 trillion omnibus bill larded with pork barrel spending tucked in by mostly Democratic lawmakers. Their close to 2,000 page bill contains thousands of pet projects a/k/a earmarks.
This is exactly the kind of secretive, pork-laden, massive spending bill that led to taxpayer revolt during the midterm elections. The earmarkers on Capitol Hill are seeking one last victory before tea party-backed GOP lawmakers take their seats next year with a clear mandate of ending the good old days of pork-barrel politics.
Earmark spending typically results in the expenditure of large sums of taxpayer money to benefit a limited number of people——from the earmarking lawmaker’s home state. It is also a way of circumventing the established federal budget process by rushing it through Congress without the full debate and scrutiny. According to budget analysts and critics, those earmarks could number into hundreds or even thousands and could go unnoticed and unchecked.
The shameless act of those congressional lawmakers so angered Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), and had this to say, “That omnibus bill will be loaded down with earmarks and pork-barrel spending, which is a direct——a direct——betrayal of the majority of voters on Nov. 2 who said ‘Stop the earmarking, stop the spending, stop the pork-barrel projects.’”
Altogether, the bill contains about $8 billion worth of earmarks, less than in previous years since House Republicans didn’t ask for any. Let’s give those self-abnegating House Republicans a big round of applause for upholding their promise to taxpayers.
One of the most controversial pork barrel projects is a measure to provide $450 million for a program to develop a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter despite a strong opposition from Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a veto threat by President Barack Obama. Critics say that it’s another wasteful spending by the Pentagon.
The many earmarks include pet projects that are not really considered top priority and urgent at a time when United States is experiencing severe budget deficit. They include the $80 million in grants to states and Indian tribes to preserve Pacific salmon and $13 million in clean water grants for Alaska native villages and other rural communities in the state. There’s also $4 million sought by Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell for the Kentucky National Guard’s marijuana eradication efforts and $8 million sought by GOP Sen. John Thune of South Dakota to help maintain the B-1 bomber fleet in his state. Though their states would benefit from those earmarks, both Republicans decided to have their earmarks removed. “This is exactly what the American people said Nov. 2 they didn’t want us to do,” McConnell said.
As unemployed and recession-weary Americans continue to lose their homes and tighten their belts even more, not even trillion-dollar deficits can persuade those thick-skinned Senate Democrats to stop their spending spree. Congress is set to spend a staggering $1.1 trillion on discretionary programs for fiscal year 2011, plus an additional $160 billion in emergency war spending.
McConnell’s and his Republican allies’ effort was not enough to prevent the giant spending bill from becoming a law. And GOP conservatives are irate over provisions that would begin to pay for the more than $1 billion needed to start implementing the Obama’s unpopular and unaffordable health care reform law, which a federal court has ruled unconstitutional.
Come January, 2011, Incoming House Speaker John Boehner and his Republican allies will outnumber their Democratic counterparts in the House. While in the Senate, the Democrats will only have a slim plurality over the GOPs. Many of the 13 incoming Senate Republicans are replacing veteran earmarkers in the Appropriations Committee.
Say what you want to say about those fiscally-responsible congressional Republican lawmakers. American voters on the other end of the spectrum should learn to appreciate the GOP’s prudence and realize that what they are doing is for the financial well-being of the United States of America. When will those Democratic lawmakers ever learn?