Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour – when not even C-SPAN is watching. In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate – they are dropped into Committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You did not vote them into law. I did not sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice. So let us work together to reform the budget process ... expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress … and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session.
If Congress doesn't vote earmarks into law, and if the President doesn't sign earmarks into law why do they have the force of law?
The cynic in me is growing stronger as I think that this President, who I want to love as much as I loathed the last one, has vetoed only one bill. The IRS isn't practicing when it takes $18 billion in taxes to fund this. And the Congress critters who take these bribes only half-heartedly applauded this when the President brought it up. Does the devil make them do it? If the President is serious why didn't he publicly call for the Line Item Veto? The democrats can't hate him any more than they already do. What's the cost? Or is he not serious and this is just a throw away line to dupe rubes like me? Why bring it up? The 2005 earmarks he referenced happened under Republican control of the House and Senate and the Dems largely ran their campaign on it and were able to regain control largely because of it. If earmarks are bad why only cut them by half?
HELP! Please explain the strategery in this one to me.
Regards,
TS
President Bush HAS repeatedly asked for a line item veto in the past. He's never been given one and perhaps he felt that tonight's speech was neither the time nor the place to ask for it, yet again.
The Dems ran most of their '06 campaigns on "CORRUPTION", neglecting, of course, to allow a mention of their collective own to ever be raised. You know WHO cares about earmarks, don't you? WE DO! The general public is far more interested in hearing about mostly falsified, lurid tales of homosexual sex, that never happened and/or being beaten over the head with the word MACACA, which nobody had ever heard of before.
Your questions are apt, but I notice you're not getting much of a response. Maybe it's because the answers are self-evident, and they're too painful for Republicans to think about.
By the way, the Republican candidate for Congress in my district, running for an open seat, won by campaigning vigorously against earmarks. Fortunately, he has a long legislative record that gives a man great confidence in his fortitude in voting against such crimes against the taxpayer now that he's on the Hill.
As long as we can keep electing folks like him, maybe there's hope yet. In the final analysis, that's the only answer to our dilemma.
Again, thanks for a good post.
This was the first I've heard of it. I was under the impression that earmarks were inserted into appropriations bills at the last minute, thereby denying the opportunity for debate. I've never heard that they're not voted into law.
Clueless on just THIS matter EV. :)