But he votes against the spending bills, so if every Congressman voted like him, there would be no earmarks. I rest my case.
It’s cheap and easy to vote against something you know will pass with or without you. I’d like to see a consistent effort by lawmakers to write an alternative bill without all the tricks. They only do this every once in a while to make a statement, like in 1994, or when President Ron kept the spending from growing faster than GNP for a while (”Cuts” in Washingspeak). Mean time the game goes on, as it has long before the Tea Party existed. If there were a regular annual rebuttal budget, one day there will be a President who will adopt it, who might get elected based on a promise to sign that and not the pork budget.
Are you serious? Are the Paulbots on this page serious? They talk flippantly about nothing being wrong with earmarks, while holding up Paul as the beacon of economic Conservatism. They always use terms like “well, RP supports this, or RP said that”. They always send youtube videos to prove their points, even when his voting record is contrary to what he says. And, his happy supporters just drink in the kool-aid. Ok, so earmarks might be just 1% of the budget, but he says that he is just returning the money taken from the people of his district BACK to those people. Yet, he fails to mention that this earmark money comes from OTHER taxpayers like you and me. He is against waste, but votes for projects in his district ALL while saying he is doing this because he Constituents want him to do so. Then, he turns around and says it should be his job to appropriate money for his district, but claims to be a steadfast supporter of states right...so, why not leave this money to the STATE to decide? RP is stark raving mad and his supporters are worse.