Posted on 02/17/2011 9:47:19 AM PST by jazusamo
While he was alive, Rep. John P. Murtha was a prince of pork, directing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars back to his southwestern Pennsylvania district. But Wednesday, the House took the first step to turn off the spigot, voting overwhelmingly to defund the National Drug Intelligence Center that Murtha had the government build in his hometown.
And that was just the beginning.
In the first freewheeling spending debate the House has held in years, Democrats and Republicans teamed up to take on entrenched defense interests and to rewrite a GOP 2011 spending bill to cut about $800 million from NASA and from homeland security research and development, and send the savings to fund local police and firefighters.
~snip~
Less significant dollarwise, but no less important as a break with the past, was the vote on the drug intelligence center (NDIC) in Pennsylvania, which Murtha had the government build in the early 1990s.
Since then, more than a half-billion dollars has been spent on the center, which Murtha jealously guarded, beating back repeated efforts to kill the program.
In one instance in 2007, Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who tried to cancel the funding, said Murtha confronted him and threatened to block any defense earmarks Mr. Rogers might request, "now and forever."
Republicans charged that Murtha violated House rules by suggesting the quid pro quo, but Democrats, who ran the chamber at the time, defeated a resolution that would have reprimanded the longtime lawmaker.
Murtha died last year, and the NDIC's opponents seized their chance this week.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The good die young, and bad old politicians do die eventually. It’s too bad they have to be in the ground a year before some of the damage they’ve done can be corrected.
NDIC/Johnstown Ping!
ping
“While he was alive, Rep. John P. Murtha was a prince of pork,”
Now he is roasting like a piece of pork.
Me thinks that district might disappear real soon.
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