Obama Breaks Promise to Stop Congressional Earmark Pork
March 11th, 2009White House officials say that President Obama will sign the $410 billion omnibus spending bill to keep key government agencies funded in 2009. The bill contains nearly 9,000 earmarks totaling tens of billions of dollars. Congressional members use earmarks to direct funding to unrelated pet projects.
During his presidential campaign, Obama promised to end wasteful spending, with a focus on reducing or eliminating earmarks altogether. Many lawmakers including some key Democrats have urged Obama to veto the bill to prove he’s serious about cutting pork.
Peter Orszag, Obama’s budget director, argued that the White House must support the spending bill because it’s inherited from the Bush administration. “This is like your relief pitcher coming into the ninth inning and wanting to redo the whole game,” Orszag said. “Next year we’re going to be the starting pitcher, and the game’s going to be completely different.” Seems like a copout, as Obama thus far has had little trouble overturning many failed Bush policies.
Obama knows this is a major compromise of his stated principles, so the President will sign the bill into law behind closed doors rather than his usual public show, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
As a small mea culpa, Obama has promised to lay out new guidelines on earmarks along with a lightly veiled threat that he will veto future spending bills that contain excessive earmarks. Gibbs said that “over the course of the president’s tenure in Washington, dozens of those bills will come to his desk” and Obama wants to make clear “that there will be some new rules of the road” for lawmakers to follow.
But Congress remains defiant in its desire to spend our taxpayer dollars. Top Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, have stated that lawmakers do not like being dictated to on Congress’ prerogative to waste money.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
It is unlikely that BHO could have not signed this bill and keep 50+% of support that he currently enjoys. The really bad news is that he will almost definitely not be that strong in a year, will be looking at mid-term elections and therefore have to make the same compromise of his principles.
He needs to save this 50+% political capital for the other great socialization of the country that is to come - health care.
What we need is a President that doesn’t care about his party and doesn’t care about getting re-elected but is not a lame duck on his/her second term. Then we will have someone that actually do the job efficiently (maybe). The job can’t be a popularity contest - we need someone that can make the hard choices. By my reckoning we haven’t had someone that could do that since Harry S. Truman.
Not withstanding the above, we could also do the job if our Representatives and Senators were not so wired into their jobs and responsible to the country not just to the pork barrel projects that they delivered.
The line item veto that Ronald Reagan so desperately wanted, would help as well.
March 12th, 2009 at 8:07 am
[...] I wrote a comment on the blog “Replace Congress” that I wanted to repeat here. Yes, I am the famous (infamous?) Irishman. The subject of the blog post was the disgust of the signing of the latest spending bill even though it contains billions of dollars of pork and earmarks and is contrary to the campaign promises of Barack Hussein Obama. Here are my comments but please click through and read the original posting and the comments of that blogger. [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
OUR PRESIDENT HAS NO INTEGRITY AND THAT FOR ME IS VERY SCARY.HOW CAN HE LOOK AT YOU WITH A STRAIGHT FACE AND LIE….LIE AND LIE SOME MORE….FOR ALL YOU WHO VOTED BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT HE WOULD BE HONEST AND CLEAN UP WASHINGTON …HE HAS DISSAPOINTED YOU…HIRES PEOPLE WHO CHEAT ON TAXES…THE MAN HE PLACED TO HEAD THE IRS …A TAX CHEAT….PROMISED LINE BY LINE TO CUT SPENDING…BUT INSTEAD TRIPLED OUR DEFICIT…WE CAN GO ON AND ON AND HE HAS ONLY BEEN IN OFFICE FOR TWO MONTHS……CAN WE AFFORD 4 YEARS….EVEN HIS OWN DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS QUESTIONING HIS AGENDA…HE HAS TO GO