Remembrance Of Things Past
Gee, that didn't take long. Democrats complained bitterly about how the Republican majority Congress did business by inserting pork into spending bills at the last minute behind closed doors. They swore to the voters they would run things differently. How differently?
Well, they're stuffing pork into spending bills behind closed doors at the last minute. See, they changed the order in the sentence.
But the new majority is already skirting its own reforms.
Perhaps the biggest retreat from that pledge came this week, when House
Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) told fellow lawmakers
that he intends to keep requests for earmarks out of pending spending bills, at
least for now. Obey said the committee will deal with them at the end of the
appropriations process in the closed-door meetings between House and Senate
negotiators known as conference committees.Democrats had complained bitterly in recent years that Republicans routinely
slipped multimillion-dollar pet projects into spending bills at the end of the
legislative process, preventing any chance for serious public scrutiny. Now
Democrats are poised to do the same."I don't give a damn if people criticize me or not," Obey said.
Obey's spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said his intention is not to keep the
projects secret. Rather, she said, so many requests for spending were made to
the appropriations panel — more than 30,000 this year — that its staff has
been unable to study them and decide their validity."I have to sign off on that stuff," Obey said. "And I'm going to make damn sure
that we've done everything we can do to make sure that they're legitimate
projects, so that you don't get embarrassed by some idiot who is putting in
money for a project that happens to benefit himself and his wife."Republicans reacted with outrage. "This is a huge step backwards on earmark
reform," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). "As bad as the earmark process is now,
this would make it immensely worse."
Meet the new boss – even worse than the old boss.
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Hiding The Money — Sunday, 3 June , 2007 @ 6:16 am
By Purple Avenger, Friday, 25 May , 2007 @ 9:54 am
The Palm Beach Post (stridently democrat oft flirting with Bolshevik) recently noted this as well. It must have really pained them to write that editorial admitting their heroes had feet of clay and spouted empty promises.