Posted on 03/18/2009 6:27:37 AM PDT by Born Conservative
Despite a likely conservative challenge in next year's Republican primary, moderate Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) won't be running from his record of bringing home the bacon.
A day after President Obama signed into law the $410 billion catchall spending bill for most federal agencies, Specter and Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) issued five news releases noting every earmarked expenditure they had secured in the legislation.
The 16-page list tallies up $161 million in projects secured by the senators, most of it coming through Specter's seniority on the Appropriations Committee. "This funding will have a tremendous impact on local communities," Specter said in one release.
Specter, 79, has essentially doubled down on a political bet that all politics is local -- and the corollary theory that all earmarks are pork except when delivered to your own towns, in which case they are a nice T-bone steak.
Former congressman Patrick Toomey, who runs the anti-tax, anti-spending Club for Growth, issued several statements in the past 10 days indicating he wanted a GOP primary rematch with Specter, to whom he lost by two points in 2004. Toomey, who represented the Allentown region before losing to Specter, has criticized Specter and other moderate Republicans for casting the decisive votes in favor of Obama's $787 billion stimulus legislation.
"Voters are fed up with Washington's out-of-control spending. Politicians aren't representing the will of the people when they bring home the bacon. They are really representing the will of their special-interest cronies," Toomey wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year. "And it's not just conservative voters who feel that way. Voters across the board have finally found something they can agree on even if their elected officials can't: It's time to cut the fat, even if that means fewer projects for their own districts."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I like what Pat Toomey stands for and hope he can run Specter out.
Pat is speaking at the Franklin County Lincoln Day Dinner tomorrow night. I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say. On a related subject, I got a call from the RNC yesterday soliciting money, and I told them they wouldn’t get one cent from me until Steele comes out and publicly cuts of Specter, Collins and Snowe. All I got in return is “we have to remain united” blah, blah, blah.
I meant to say “publicly cuts OFF”. sorry for the typo.
This Pennsylvanian isn’t blushing. I already told the staffers at Specter, Casey, and Schwartz’s offices that I didn’t think Philadelphia’s crime fighting money should be coming out of the pockets of my elderly parents in Michigan. They didn’t have much to say about. I suppose they too think federal money comes from the tooth fairy.
You don’t understand. Specter and Casey don’t care what you think. Casey does what Harry Reid tells him to do, and SPecter is just plain arrogant.
And still no Pennsylvanian has stepped up to the plate and kicked Specters ass and at the very least put him in intensive care?
The article is spot-on: the problem is with the voters, not the politicians.
If a politician who secured and touted earmarks was voted out of office (because of those earmarks), the entire earmark process would end.
However, it is the sad truth that politicians keep getting re-elected BECAUSE they “bring home the bacon”. The politician knows that his job rides on this, and he delivers what WE, the voters, demand of him. He is giving us what we want.
Obama was elected on the same platform: giving away the “goodies”. He made it clear that he would take from those who have, and give to those who wanted. And he won.
It is the body of the Republic which has putrefied; the politicians are merely the symptom of that corruption.
Earmarks are just plain embezzlement. Just as if a friend or family member was buying you gifts with money embezzled from his employer would be wrong, it is wrong of voters to benefit from funds embezzled via earmarks from the general treasury. People have to get past the idea that “as long as I’ve got my pie I don’t care what effect it has on others”. That’s the union way of thinking.
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