PORKULUS BILL PASSES SENATE, OBAMA TO SIGN - HYPOCRISY REIGNS
The $410 billion dollar Omnibus bill containing 9000 earmarks passed the final Senate hurdle and will now make its way to the Oval Office for Obama to sign. This pork filled bill with some of the most irresponsible and stupid spending on record is also backed by some of the most hypocritical Representatives from BOTH parties.
The hypocrisy over this bill covers two Branches of the government. Obama, who pledged that he would not sign any bill containing earmarks, once again breaks that pledge. First he signed the earmark laden socialist spending bill, which was falsely called a, "stimulus package," now he has stated that he will sign the porkulus Omnibus bill claiming his reasoning behind it was that the bill was started BEFORE he took office. Regardless it will still be HIS signature that makes the bill law.
No one is immune from the hypocrisy found in connection with this bill. Republicans are railing at Democrats about the pork that reeks in this bill while a majority in the House actually have one or more pork projects contained in the very legislation they are screaming about. In fact 139 of the of the 178 GOP House Representatives have tagged this bill with their pet projects.
Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner late last week announced a stop gap measure that would hold spending at the federal level to 2008 figures which would negate the 8% across the board increase in the Omnibus bill and all 9000 earmarks. With the Senate fighting over the bill it looked like the Boehner plan would become reality especially since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that if the Senate did not pass it by Tuesday she would be forced to accept the GOP plan.
But pork won out in the Senate and the hypocrisy of both parties prevailed as the bill passed and now waits Obama's signature. All the while from the White House to Capitol Hill both the President, Senators and Representatives have been crying about wasteful government spending. But when the rubber hits the road and they have a prime opportunity to curb the very waste they all rail about not only do they not take the opportunity but attempt to justify their hypocrisy with lame excuses like Obama's, "the bill started before I took office, " to many Congressional members saying they would remove their pork if everyone else does.
Truly the children are in charge because both lame excuses sound like a child saying to their parent, " but Mom all the kids are doing it." Or , " Dad, it's not my fault because HE did it first!" Obama and the Democrats promised change and as usual nothing changes. The GOP when in charge also promised change and the only change they made was abandoning long standing GOP fiscal principles of less government and less spending and becoming like big government and big spending Democrats.
And it looks like while the Dems are in charge, when it comes to pork, most on the GOP side of the isle will fall in lock step with their liberal counterparts. This is one of the very reasons why I have yet to renew my GOP membership for 2009. While I believe that Michael Steele plans to renew the RNC and restore conservative principles within the party, until I start seeing results that satisfy me I will not give them my support.
There have been signs of progress but the involvement of most of the House members in the ridiculous porkulus bill negates most of the favorable gains the the GOP has made in the lase few weeks. As far as Obama's hypocrisy, this is becoming par for the course with the President who promised change and has yet to bring any except changing the deficit form bad to ridiculous.
Frankly I am totally disgusted with the whole lot and unless a complete shake up takes place in 2010 placing truly responsible Representatives in Congress who then can hold an irresponsible President accountable, our ship of state will continue to sink with the Captain and his crew playing poker while the passengers drown!
Ken Taylor
The hypocrisy over this bill covers two Branches of the government. Obama, who pledged that he would not sign any bill containing earmarks, once again breaks that pledge. First he signed the earmark laden socialist spending bill, which was falsely called a, "stimulus package," now he has stated that he will sign the porkulus Omnibus bill claiming his reasoning behind it was that the bill was started BEFORE he took office. Regardless it will still be HIS signature that makes the bill law.
No one is immune from the hypocrisy found in connection with this bill. Republicans are railing at Democrats about the pork that reeks in this bill while a majority in the House actually have one or more pork projects contained in the very legislation they are screaming about. In fact 139 of the of the 178 GOP House Representatives have tagged this bill with their pet projects.
Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner late last week announced a stop gap measure that would hold spending at the federal level to 2008 figures which would negate the 8% across the board increase in the Omnibus bill and all 9000 earmarks. With the Senate fighting over the bill it looked like the Boehner plan would become reality especially since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that if the Senate did not pass it by Tuesday she would be forced to accept the GOP plan.
But pork won out in the Senate and the hypocrisy of both parties prevailed as the bill passed and now waits Obama's signature. All the while from the White House to Capitol Hill both the President, Senators and Representatives have been crying about wasteful government spending. But when the rubber hits the road and they have a prime opportunity to curb the very waste they all rail about not only do they not take the opportunity but attempt to justify their hypocrisy with lame excuses like Obama's, "the bill started before I took office, " to many Congressional members saying they would remove their pork if everyone else does.
Truly the children are in charge because both lame excuses sound like a child saying to their parent, " but Mom all the kids are doing it." Or , " Dad, it's not my fault because HE did it first!" Obama and the Democrats promised change and as usual nothing changes. The GOP when in charge also promised change and the only change they made was abandoning long standing GOP fiscal principles of less government and less spending and becoming like big government and big spending Democrats.
And it looks like while the Dems are in charge, when it comes to pork, most on the GOP side of the isle will fall in lock step with their liberal counterparts. This is one of the very reasons why I have yet to renew my GOP membership for 2009. While I believe that Michael Steele plans to renew the RNC and restore conservative principles within the party, until I start seeing results that satisfy me I will not give them my support.
There have been signs of progress but the involvement of most of the House members in the ridiculous porkulus bill negates most of the favorable gains the the GOP has made in the lase few weeks. As far as Obama's hypocrisy, this is becoming par for the course with the President who promised change and has yet to bring any except changing the deficit form bad to ridiculous.
Frankly I am totally disgusted with the whole lot and unless a complete shake up takes place in 2010 placing truly responsible Representatives in Congress who then can hold an irresponsible President accountable, our ship of state will continue to sink with the Captain and his crew playing poker while the passengers drown!
Ken Taylor
posted by The Liberal Lie The Conservative Truth | 10:24 AM
3 Comments:
I agree with some of your sentiment about earmarks, but the reality is that the American people don't much care about this issue - certainly not enough to do anything about it.
Part of the reason people really don't care that much is that earmarks are a very, very small part of government spending. For example, the total amount of earmark spending comes to $5.5 billion out of the total $410 billion in this omnibus bill. That means it only comes to about 1.3 percent of the spending and i is split almost 50-50 between Dems and Republicans.
In addition, many of the earmarks go for infrastructure, hospitals, and road improvements in local districts and states. When you really look at it, probably wasteful earmarks come to less than 1 tenth of 1 percent.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned or that they shouldn't be eliminated. But, at the same time, they don't really amount to a whole lot at the end of the day.
President Obama signing that bill is simple plain proof that he is a liar.
The hypocrisy of this administration knows no bounds. Obama should have vetoed this bill to be true to his campaign promises.
Rob, regarding your point about earmarks, I care alot about them and I disagree that wasteful earmarks come to less than 0.1 of 1%. I feel that all domestic government spending is probably 25-30% waste. If this is true, hundreds of billions of dollars should be cut from the Federal budget. Instead Obama is proposing a budget increase of about $ 500-600 billion over last year's budget. If we begin to dis- assemble the Federal bureuacracy,we can easily cut taxes AND reduce the deficit. A good starting point would be a 50% reduction in the business income tax, a reduction of the capital gains tax to 10% and making the Bush personal tax rates permanent.
Post a Comment
<< Home