Posted on 03/20/2006 5:16:35 PM PST by Mobile Vulgus
Now here is the problem
John Campbell (R., Calif) has said that he has gotten 63 requests for him to add earmarks into bills in the House so far this legislative session. (Earmarks are spending appropriations added to bills that are unconnected with the spending requests being added. Earmarks are not reviewable by Congress and when added to a bill, it is not necessarily obvious that it is there, nor can Congressmen who has added an earmark be revealed or debated.)
In an appearance on the Hugh Hewitt radio show (March 16th), Mr. Campbell said that the totals of these earmarks would number in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Campbell didn't mention if he actually acceded to any of the requests, interestingly enough, but he did tell the story as if he did not do so.
OK, well he is a Congressman, after all. So, this shouldn't be too surprising, you might say. But here is the thing. Campbell only took his seat in Congress last December, less than 4 months ago, as a result of a December special election to replace Representative Chris Cox who resigned to become Chairman of the SEC.
Now, if Campbell, currently the most junior member of the House of Reps (as Hewitt teasingly notes), can be hit up for so many earmarks in so short an amount of time, how many such requests does the average Congressman get on a yearly basis?
The number must stagger the mind.
And, if these politicians are so continually confronted with such requests and the greasing of palms that accompanies them, shouldn't we expect many of these politicians to eventually break down and slip such spending secretly into bills more and more as their career rolls on?
Human nature would say a resounding YES to be the answer to that query.
And this is the problem. The earmarking tradition is conducive to one thing and one thing only; a wild, continuing growth in Federal spending.
We need to stop earmarking NOW.
"One man's pork is another man's job" Robert K.K.K Byrd.
"One man's pork is another man's job" Robert K.K.K Byrd.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Mark Twain
I've often thought the way to handle the budget would be to give every Senator a certain amount of money (say $4 billion) and then every Representative a smaller amount (say $1 billion). (What is the federal budget these days? $835 billion?)
They could appropriate any part of this money to any authorized program. Of course, no program could receive more than its authorization.
I think they would oppose the idea though. They wouldn't be able to blame excessive spending on their colleagues. On the other hand, they couldn't reward their allies very well without making new enemies.
Nah. All them folks in Washington are, just the best. They aren't money changers at all. We just love 'em all to pieces...
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