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Old 03-04-2009, 10:09 AM
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"I don't think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do."

"I don't think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do. I hope all of you got that down," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters yesterday, saying that Obama could only "suggest" certain reforms for Congress to consider.

Congress tells President Obama, don't touch our earmarks, we will spend the money the way we see fit.

Amazing - This is an important example of why the current plans will fail. In the face of this huge struggle facing America, Congress not only thumbs it's nose at the President but continues to push for irresponsible spending. This is just incredible.

The congressional leaders go on to say it's their constitutional responsibility to spend as they see fit.

What a crock.

Unfortunately the president has already given in by letting irresponsible spending get into the stimulus bill.

He has little he can do without crossing the democratic leadership of the House and Senate. Does he have the strength, possibly with the publics support. Does he have the experience? That strength goes to Congress.

They are already defying him in the press, what's next?

Time to wake up and smell the coffee – big gov’t isn’t the answer either.

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washingtonpost.com

President Walks Tightrope on Earmarks
Congressional Democrats Balk at Trimming Sort of Provisions Obama Himself Sought in Senate

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; A04




Congressional Democrats pushed back yesterday against suggestions from President Obama that they rein in spending on narrow special interest provisions, defending these "earmarks" as a sliver of the trillions of dollars in federal spending and part of their constitutional duty to their constituents.

Noting Obama's past pursuit of earmarks while he was senator, Democrats set up a squabble with the president over the ingrained culture of the congressional prerogative to direct federal spending as lawmakers see fit.

They reacted coolly to proclamations from a top White House aide that Obama would change the "rules" for future spending bills once the current $410 billion catch-all spending bill, a leftover from last fall, clears the Senate later this week.

"I don't think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do. I hope all of you got that down," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters yesterday, saying that Obama could only "suggest" certain reforms for Congress to consider.

The spending dispute came as Obama tried to walk a fine line between bolstering his reformist credentials, including a campaign promise to slash in half the overall number of earmarks, and maintaining his alliance with Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. In his speeches Obama regularly takes credit for the passage of the $787 billion economic stimulus act last month without "any earmarks," implicitly suggesting that earmarks are bad legislation and would have hurt the bill.

But the president's message has been muddied by his own mixed record on the subject. For his first three years in the Senate, Obama sought the line-item spending measures, co-sponsoring more than $90 million worth of earmarks in the 2008 appropriations bills, according to a study by the independent Taxpayers for Common Sense. In late 2007, while campaigning for president, Obama announced that he would no longer seek earmarks.

In assembling his Cabinet, Obama chose a half-dozen members of Congress, including Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, each of whom brought home earmarks to his or her state. When the earmarks from this week's $410 billion legislation are added to those in a spending bill approved last fall, Obama's team will have co-sponsored more than $280 million in earmarks for the 2009 appropriations measures, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Obama spent about 20 minutes of an hour-long meeting last week with Democratic leaders discussing ways to curb earmarks and make the process more transparent, aides said. Lawmakers yesterday declined to discuss his pending proposal, and White House aides offered no specifics.
"The rules of the road going forward for those many appropriations bills that will go through Congress and come to his desk will be done differently," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday.

But such changes could be hard to come by in a Congress that is led largely by lawmakers who were once members of the vaunted appropriations committees, where earmarks are an ensconced tradition. Hoyer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) all used their perches on the appropriations panels to climb the leadership ladder in the Capitol.

The catch-all spending bill currently on the Senate floor has $7.7 billion in earmarks, and there are another $6.6 billion in the funding bills approved in September. Critics say these spending provisions, often included at the request of a single lawmaker, are wasteful and often are accompanied by campaign contributions from earmark beneficiaries and their lobbyists. Reid rejected that suggestion in opposing an amendment that would strip more than $8 million in earmarks to clients of the lobbying firm PMA Group, which is now under federal investigation for donation irregularities.

"Nice try," Reid told reporters.

Reid said earmark reforms, imposed after Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, require lawmakers to sign forms that the spending provisions would not personally benefit their families. The overall number of earmarks, which quadrupled under Republican rule from 1995 to 2007, has fallen in the last two years.

Hoyer said the Constitution gave Congress the duty to direct how funds are spent, noting that Obama previously pursued earmarks because "he believed that there were priorities in Illinois that as a U.S. senator he wanted to address."

"I, philosophically, believe that it would be an undermining of the Article I responsibilities given to the Congress of the United States," Hoyer said, "if it were to abandon its right to add items that it believes are priorities for our country. . . . That's our responsibility, and we ought to keep that responsibility."

Conservatives have sought to drive a wedge between Obama and Democrats on the issue, suggesting that he will eventually force them into meeting his goals of curbing these expenditures. "You can't campaign like he did on earmarks and not have some change," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), an outspoken opponent of earmarks.

Facing problems with Republicans supportive of earmarks, Coburn and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) met defeat yesterday on a series of amendments trying to strip earmarks from the $410 billion spending bill. On McCain's effort to completely zero out earmarks, nine Republicans joined 52 Democrats and two independents in maintaining the earmarks.

Among those supportive of earmarks were eight Republicans who were either members of leadership or ranking minority members of Senate committees.

Last edited by X5rolls; 03-11-2009 at 07:16 AM.
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  #2  
Old 03-04-2009, 10:26 AM
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He can always VETO it.

Webster's Dictionary releases new spelling for the word HYPOCRITE, it will now be spelled: OBAMA
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  #3  
Old 03-04-2009, 10:27 AM
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Absolutely.
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Old 03-04-2009, 11:04 AM
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I agree, but then it will get twisted in the media and Obama will be made to be the one holding things back, .... everyday it becomes more clear who is dragging this country into the ground CONGRESS and it fat cat mentality

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  #5  
Old 03-11-2009, 07:09 AM
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More earmarks (pork sausage) please

We better sign this now and then talk about earmarks later.... Is this the change everyone hoped for?

The president was going to address earmark reform Wednesday but instead has decided to spend some more on it. Hmmmmm. Hey, what the hell, it's only tax payer dollars, the gov't knows what they are doing.

Obama to sign spending bill, push for new rules

Obama to sign spending bill, push for new rules

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer 48 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to sign a massive spending bill to keep the federal government running, but he is cracking down on lawmakers' penchant for stuffing such legislation with billions of dollars in pet projects.

Obama could sign the $410 billion spending package as early as Wednesday, although he remains "troubled" by the so-called earmarks in the bill that Republicans and moderate Democrats have eviscerated as unworthy pork-barrel spending. The president was to announce earmark reforms on Wednesday.

White House officials in recent weeks have dismissed criticism of the earmarks in the bill, saying the legislation was a remnant of last year and that the president planned to turn his attention to future spending instead of looking backward.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama wouldn't be the first president to sign legislation that he viewed as less than ideal. Asked whether Obama had second thoughts about signing the bill, Gibbs' reply was curt: "No."

"This is necessary to continue funding government," Gibbs said. "It represents last year's business. Although it's not perfect, the president will sign the legislation, but demonstrate for all involved rules moving forward that he thinks can make this process work a little bit better."
It's that process that administration official planned to focus on Wednesday, not a bill signing that might take place in private. Aides said the administration would move to introduce new "rules of the road" that could allow Obama greater sway over lawmakers, particularly on politically embarrassing spending that generated mockery from pundits and rival politicians.

During his presidential campaign, Obama promised to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel-spending ways. Yet the bill sent from the Democratic-controlled Congress to the White House on Tuesday contained 7,991 earmarks totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the Republican staff of the House Appropriations Committee.

While the White House would say only that Obama would announce new rules on earmarks on Wednesday, it was clear he wanted to rein in spending, particularly on the pet projects lawmakers inserted into the spending bill.

The 1,132-page bill has an extraordinary reach, wrapping together nine spending bills to fund the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs. Among the many earmarks are $485,000 for a boarding school for at-risk native students in western Alaska and $1.2 million for Helen Keller International so the nonprofit can provide eyeglasses to students with poor vision.

Most of the government has been running on a stopgap funding bill set to expire at midnight Wednesday. Refusing to sign the newly completed spending bill would force Congress to pass another bill to keep the lights on come Thursday or else shut down the massive federal government. That is an unlikely possibility for a president who has spent just seven weeks in office.

The $410 billion bill includes significant increases in food aid for the poor, energy research and other programs. It was supposed to have been completed last fall, but Democrats opted against election-year battles with Republicans and former President George W. Bush.
The measure was a top priority for Democratic leaders, who praised it for numerous increases denied by Bush. It once enjoyed support from Republicans.

But the bill ran into an unexpected political hailstorm in Congress after Obama's spending-heavy economic stimulus bill and his 2010 budget plan, which forecast a $1.8 trillion deficit for the current budget year.
The bill's big increases — among them a 14 percent boost for a popular program that feeds infants and poor women and a 10 percent increase for housing vouchers for the poor — represent a clear win for Democrats who spent most of the past decade battling with Bush over money for domestic programs.

Generous above-inflation increases are spread throughout, including a $2.4 billion, 13 percent increase for the Agriculture Department and a 10 percent increase for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system. The measure also contains a provision denying lawmakers the automatic cost-of-living pay increase they are due next Jan. 1.
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  #6  
Old 03-11-2009, 07:32 AM
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A Line Item Veto would be very helpful...
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  #7  
Old 03-11-2009, 07:40 AM
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Maybe more importantly someone who will/can use it.
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Old 03-11-2009, 04:29 PM
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I don't agree with a line item veto for the President. IMHO, that is unconstitutional, since the Congress controls appropriations.

On a political level, I don't think the POTUS should have that power, as it puts too much power in his hands.

I don't like the way this earmark process works, but I don't a line item veto is the answer. Theoretically, those earmarks are politically vetted, and approved by Congress. One stroke of the pen undoes a whole political process.

In reality, that process is broken, and the only thing that will fix it is new leadership.
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Old 03-11-2009, 05:30 PM
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Old 03-11-2009, 08:54 PM
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Apparently the line item veto is not available - it was ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court in 98.

So it's an all or nothing prop.
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