Posted on 11/09/2010 1:12:01 PM PST by WOBBLY BOB
When the Nov. 2 general election is over and the lame duck session of Congress begins, Inhofe said he plans to take up the cause of earmarks again. Inhofe said he is listed as the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate by a number of conservative journals and will try to reinstitute the practice of earmarks. He said earmarks should be germane to the legislation they are attached to.
“It would be nothing short of criminal to go to all the trouble of electing great new anti-establishment senators, only to have them cede to the executive branch their constitutional power and obligation, which is exactly what a moratorium on earmarks would do,” Inhofe said in a prepared remark.
(Excerpt) Read more at enidnews.com ...
WTH? Inhofe’s record has been VERY conservative. I can only sort of rationalize this in the sense that giving Obama ANY leeway to make ANY decision is a bad thing, but if bringing back earmarks is the price to stop it, I’m not sure it’s worth the price.
Defense spending is constitutional if it’s valid and not corrupt or fraud or someone’s pet project to bring home the pork. If there is a worthwhile defense project that needs funding beyond the defense budget, then the congress should debate and vote it up or down. Don’t earmark it on a totally unrelated bill.
They don’t have time you say? B/S. Cut the damned “gay rights” debates, the socialistic debates, the endless economy killing regulatory bills, and the ninety percent of what they argue about in congress that is clearly unconstitutional and beyond their scope, and they’ll have plenty of time left over to debate and vote on genuinely constitutional issues.
from podcast from last night-—
hear it from the horse’s mouth.
http://www.ktlkfm.com/pages/jasonlewisshow.html
Except that Inhofe is the lone stalwart against the climate change propaganda - so we may be screwed either way.
I don’t think he’s a RINO and in listening to him on the radio last night, I thought he made some valid points.
All in all, I’d rather see earmarks go away.They seem to be used as bribes on wasteful crap more often than not.
Which is not to say some of defense spending is not wasteful.
I’d like to see everthing cut across the board 15% for 2 years starting now. Then if/when the conservatives win the senate, eliminating alphabet agencies with a chainsaw and not a scalpel.
I agree. He was against “climate change” before it was cool.
(before it was “climate change” and was still “warming”)
He’s been ahead of the curve on AGW and EPA bullcrap.
“It would be nothing short of criminal to go to all the trouble of electing great new anti-establishment senators, only to have them cede to the executive branch their constitutional power and obligation, which is exactly what a moratorium on earmarks would do,”
This is B.S, and intellectually delusional.
“Earmarks” simply assume that each and every legislator has as much power and authority as the entire legislative body, and a right to exercise it. It does that because it denies that the entire body has a right to reject them, on principle. Earmarks work on the principle that by everyone in the legislative body agreeing to not question the right of anyone to THEIR earmarks, they are disenfranchising the obligations of the entire body, and granting the power that ONLY belongs to the entire body, allowing each of the individuals, to use by their sole discretion.
Mr. Inhofe claims that the Senate would be ceding power to the executive, which is a lie. “The Senate”, that is the entire Senate HAS that power. What Mr. Inhofe is actually asking is that the Senate cede the use of its full power to each and every individual Senator, where their mere one vote (earmark) determines a matter of the government’s expenses.
Its nothing other than an old-boys-club atmosphere by which the legislators cede to the themselves the right to single-handedly use the power of the entire body. They get away with it by agreeing to all do it. It needs to be outlawed.
Period.
I think this misses the point. Granted, the total amount of earmarks is chickenfeed compared to the rest of the spending.
But the problem, as I see it, is the way they function politically: they are used to buy votes of senators or representatives who are holding out against a piece of legislation. Hey, we’ll let you put in this or that sweetener for your constituents if you’ll then vote for the bill. The money involved is not that much, but it matters to enough of the congresscritter’s constituents to be worth something to him (politically, next election) and that then moves him to vote for what he otherwise would not have voted for.
Earmarks are a kind of scrip functioning in the congressional “economy.” And they corrupt the process of reaching a decision about whether to vote for this or that legislation.
That, at least, is what I hear DeMint saying. Why Imhofe doesn’t agree, I don’t get.
“It would be nothing short of criminal to go to all the trouble of electing great new anti-establishment senators, only to have them cede to the executive branch their constitutional power and obligation, which is exactly what a moratorium on earmarks would do,” Inhofe said in a prepared remark.
Okay. Who put the LSD in Inhofe's coffee?
(Is Babs, 'don't call me ma'am', Boxer playing Halloween tricks on Conservative senators.)
“It would be nothing short of criminal to go to all the trouble of electing great new anti-establishment senators, only to have them cede to the executive branch their constitutional power and obligation, which is exactly what a moratorium on earmarks would do,” Inhofe said in a prepared remark.
Okay. Who put the LSD in Inhofe's coffee?
(Is Babs, 'don't call me ma'am', Boxer playing Halloween tricks on Conservative senators.)
If Inhofe is a RINO then EVERYONE is a RINO! Why don’t some of you do some reading about this process. Earmarks are not the problem. Earmarks unrelated to the legislation are the problem. Earmarks are a tiny fraction of this bloated government’s over-spending.
“Fixing” the earmark problem, and the impact it has on the defecit and debt, is akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Looks good. Accomplishes very little
If it makes you feel better, you can all call me a RINO. It’s so over-used, at this point, it doesn’t matter. Reagan was a RINO. Lincoln was a RINO. Rush is a RINO. RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO, RINO. RINO. Everyone is a RINO. Kyl is a RINO. Shelby is a RINO, Jeff Sessions is a RINO, Grassley is a RINO, Burr is a RINO, DeMint is a RINO. ALL REPUBLICANS are REBUBLICANS IN NAME ONLY. Woo Hoo! Yeeee hawwww! eeeeeeeeeeooooooowwwwwwwww!!! RINO! RINO! RINO!
Let’s have another 100,000 references to RINO’s. YIPEEEEE!
After an appropriations bill has passed, a congressman can insert an earmark in another bill directing that already appropriated monies be spent in a certain way. These do not increase the budget.
They could, for example, direct the military to buy pink tutus for queers out of money allocated for ammunition.
I can agree about someone being mistaken. :) I just don’t want him being thrown overboard.
Sometimes I think FREEPers are too quick to dismiss any Republican out of hand because they don’t agree w/them on 100+% of the issues.
I wouldn't cry if he was replaced by a Tom Coburn "clone"....
The guy comes across more often than not...IMO, as an arrogant ass.
Maybe that's just me..........
If they can’t stop spending on “small stuff”, they never will on huge stuff.
If they can’t defund AMTRAK and NPR, they won’t defund anything.
You sidestep the issue I think Imhofe is raising. It’s not about big or little amounts of money. It’s about the way Congress functions, about the way “cram downs” take place.
Certainly money is an important issue. But as far as devastating changes in the way America is governed is concerned, the horsetrading of earmarks was the way Pelosi convinced congressmen whose constituents were opposed to Obamacare or the Stimulus to nonetheless vote for those monstrosities.
Imhofe may be wrong about this, but I hear him and others raising this question. It deserves dispassionate discussion.
Fabulous, Senator. How do you propose discouraging their use as bribes?
Just asking, since Obamacare would have died in the Senate without the Cornhusker Kickback, for example.
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