Monday, March 27, 2006
Earmarks 3/20/06
Congress has ways of getting projects funded. One of them is called Earmarks and it’s being abused. In 1995 there were 1,439 earmarks, in 2005 there were 13,997! In fact there have been some 66,000 earmarks since 1991.
This is where the word “pork” comes from, where the $231 million for the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" and the $50 million dollar “rain forest” project in Iowa comes from, when our soldiers need armor, VA funding is being cut, homes need to be rebuilt in New Orleans etc.
Earmarks are put into Conference reports, where they can’t be removed, the reports can be up to 280 pages long and are purposely brought to Congress for vote that day, with no time to read them, so they go through with no oversight.
This is corrupting the legislative process, as it uses up so much of congresses time, one sub committee alone got 15,000 requests!!
Everyone is encouraged to put in their pet projects so that they can bring back money to their constituents, thus helping their own next election. What happens is that members won’t vote for bills unless their earmarks are in them. It also means that they are forced to vote for bills that they would never normally vote for, or that their constituents would never want them to vote for.
Law makers are trying to make changes to this corrupt system.
This is where the word “pork” comes from, where the $231 million for the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" and the $50 million dollar “rain forest” project in Iowa comes from, when our soldiers need armor, VA funding is being cut, homes need to be rebuilt in New Orleans etc.
Earmarks are put into Conference reports, where they can’t be removed, the reports can be up to 280 pages long and are purposely brought to Congress for vote that day, with no time to read them, so they go through with no oversight.
This is corrupting the legislative process, as it uses up so much of congresses time, one sub committee alone got 15,000 requests!!
Everyone is encouraged to put in their pet projects so that they can bring back money to their constituents, thus helping their own next election. What happens is that members won’t vote for bills unless their earmarks are in them. It also means that they are forced to vote for bills that they would never normally vote for, or that their constituents would never want them to vote for.
Law makers are trying to make changes to this corrupt system.
# posted by Florence Vincent @ 5:55 PM 
