Earmark dispute splits GOP senators

WASHINGTON — Even as they prepare to welcome 13 newly elected Republicans into their ranks, GOP senators have already fired the opening salvos in an intraparty ideological battle over federal spending — one that threatens to divide the upper chamber’s Old Bulls and newer Tea Party-aligned members.

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a champion of conservative candidates like Florida’s Marco Rubio and Utah’s Mike Lee, announced Tuesday that he will push Senate Republicans to vote to make “earmarking” — the process by which lawmakers can set aside federal funds for pet projects in their home states — expressly against internal GOP rules.

Six of the new GOP freshmen, including five who received backing from DeMint during their campaigns, have signed on to his proposal.

But, while DeMint and other Senate fiscal conservatives argue that so-dubbed “pork barrel spending” wastes taxpayer dollars and facilitates fishy political back-scratching, other Republicans say that a ban would do little to curb government spending and would put more control into the hands of government agencies rather than lawmakers who best understand their constituents.

Full Story Here:
Earmark dispute splits GOP senators

And so it begins…

The RINOs love pork just as much as the Dems. I told my readers before the election, ‘as soon as the elections are over, we’ll see a resurgence in the RINO herd’, and we are. NOW is the time to put a lid on it too. STOP these out of control RINOs from spending money this nation doesn’t have. NOW is the time for the entire GOP and ALL Conservatives to stand and tell a few Senators NO! A word that HATE to hear.

“This debate doesn’t save any money, which is why it’s kind of exasperating to some of us who really want to cut spending and get the federal government’s discretionary accounts under control,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma was even more blunt. “The ban doesn’t accomplish anything,” he told POLITICO.

Several of the GOP candidates who won Senate seats on Nov. 2 made earmark reform a central plank of their campaign pitches. Former presidential nominee Sen. John McCain was a high-profile champion of the idea during the 2008 presidential race, commonly accusing Congress of wasting money with the gusto of “a drunken sailor.”

Look at the names and watch the *money trail*, it’s that simple.

I know our states need money to operate, Texas alone is facing a HUGE deficit over the year 2011, but that doesn’t mean that other parts of the nation should bail us out, and to my way of thinking, earmarks are nothing more than *mini bailout programs*, and in some cases, they’re not all that *mini*.

McConnell and others who are wary of DeMint’s proposal say that eliminating congressional earmarks would simply shift the responsibility for doling out federal funds to executive branch agencies — essentially giving the White House greater power over government cash.

“Every president, Republican or Democrat, would like to have a blank check from Congress to do whatever he chooses to do,” McConnell said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation last week. “You could eliminate every congressional earmark and you would save no money. It’s really an argument about discretion.”

Maybe we need to give McConnell a new nickname, how about *Porky*? It sure does seem like the good Senator loves him some pork…

Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for the anti-spending group Citizens Against Government Waste (publishers of the the annual “Pig Book,” which details pork barrel spending) calls that argument “a crock.” She argues that money for earmarks is often set aside in Congress’s budgeting process — funds that could easily be reduced if they were not available for non-competitive projects targeted by individual lawmakers.

Paige is very correct. Please, continue reading the full article, it goes on to tell you what banning earmarks would save us and it also references the March vote and just who the Republican Senators were that stood with the Dems in an effort to keep this blank check available.

Most of us have made a commitment to fight out of control spending and the RINOs that are doing it. We have vowed to replace the RINOs with true fiscal Conservatives and to go after ALL Dems that aren’t fiscal conservatives, uh, that would be ALL Dems I am sure.

So, do we just talk about it or are we going to get involved and write letters, make phone calls, send emails and faxes and literally inundate the RINOs letting them know that We, The People are watching, and we’re NOT happy with what we’re seeing?

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