Word: earmarking
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...case of the current budget, Republicans - who themselves account for 40% of the earmark requests - are howling at what they view as Obama's blatant hypocrisy. House minority leader John Boehner and nine other House Republicans sent Pelosi and Obama a letter asking for a freeze in spending levels and for a re-examination of the earmarks in the bill. "There are 9,000 reasons to vote against this spending bill - 9,000 earmarks slipped and crammed into this pork-stuffed nightmare," Representative John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican, said on Wednesday in a statement. "Last night, President Obama bragged about...
Obama has called for an earmark-free stimulus package, so the legislation shouldn't have too many silly waterslides or Mafia museums or cranberry subsidies in its text. Instead, Congress will dole out hundreds of billions of dollars to states and agencies. But that's where the real waste is going to be. There's $30 billion for highways, funneled through state transportation departments, which love to build unsustainable sprawl roads to nowhere. There's $4.5 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers, which is addicted to projects that destroy wetlands and induce development in vulnerable floodplains. There...
...roof. And there's talk of further subsidizing home mortgages that are already tax-deductible, as if the Federal Government hasn't done enough to encourage homeownership (and in the process, it can be argued, help lay the foundation for the current crisis). But Obama has called for an earmark-free stimulus, so the legislation shouldn't have too many embarrassing waterslides, Mafia museums or cranberry subsidies. Instead, Congress would funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to states and various agencies...
...Despite what Obama has promised, Oberstar is the first to admit that there is no real way to prevent projects like the Bridge to Nowhere, the controversial $185 million earmark requested by former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens for an island with a population of 50. Though the bridge was never built, the earmark became a symbol for congressional excess and waste. Transportation, as such a local issue, lends itself naturally to earmarks, and Oberstar's committee is a bit infamous on the Hill as a friendly home to such pork-barrel projects. But Oberstar is in constant contact with Obama...
...these proposals may make it into the final version of the stimulus bill. And this outline comes before members of Congress have laid out their wish lists of pet projects, which they are likely to do, despite Obama's claim that the package will be earmark-free. Critics of the bill have taken comfort from the possibility that both chambers will hold hearings before its passage, giving them an opportunity to air their grievances. "I remain concerned about wasteful spending," House minority leader John Boehner told reporters after meeting with Obama on Tuesday. "Simply put, we should not bury future...