Monday, December 13, 2010

Tea Party caucus spends a billion on earmarks

According to a little blurb in (the printed version of) The Week, the 52 current members of Congress' Tea Party Caucus, which vows to cut federal spending, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at over $1 billion over the last fiscal year. NationalJournal.com was cited as the source, but I can't find where they printed that ...
I did, however, find this - an article describing how Repubs are backing off a ban on earmarks because apparently they failed to realize what the word "moratorium" means.

Republicans Learn What the Word 'Ban' Means "When congressional Republicans backed a two-year earmark moratorium in a wave of post-election enthusiasm," writes Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason, "apparently they didn't understand that banning earmarks would entail not having any more earmarks."


You gotta love it, right? Am I right?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

what was the value of the proposed democrat earmarks?

macsurf said...

That's not the point anon.

The point is the Tea Partiers' hypocrisy. They campaigned, no, the they railed, against "pork" and "earmarks", and all the while they were at the trough like everybody else, snorting, grousing, and sucking up every bit of pork that they could get.

Even the self anointed diva of the Tea Party, Ellie Mae Palin, was a pork hog as governor of Alaska. She was all for the money the "bridge to nowhere" brought to the state before she was against it, once the story broke and it became an embarrassment.

But the bigger issue for me is the shameless was so many in the Tea Party play the fear and bigotry cards to mobilize and score points with the overwhelmingly white, right wing base of the unholy GOP/Tea Party alliance

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, you are missing the point. The Dems didn't vote for a moratorium on earmarks and then backpedal a month later. Pure hypocrisy.

macsurf said...

Gotcha.

Your post was not clear to me. The hypocrisy of so many on the right is astounding but, unfortunately, they, thanks to our capitulating man in the White House, are rapidly gaining the political and strategic upper hand as 2012 approaches.

Anonymous said...

so, the democrats proposed how much in earmarks?

Gillian Swart said...

Why don't you look it up, Anon? There's a whole website by a Repub senator devoted to "pork" spending ... my point was the hypocrisy, not the tit for tat.

macsurf said...

What I'd like to know is what are all the Tea Partiers and Repuglicans gonna do when their efforts to repeal health care reform result in the health insurance industry stopping the funding of their campaigns?

The mandate was the industry's prime agenda, along with defeating any semblance of a truly universal or public option, and most of the Baggers and the Repugs went along with it because of the SCADS of dollars the industry was pumping into their political war chests.

Now, suddenly, the mandate is unconstitutional? It's a mandate the industry paid them to support, and some Dems to bail on a truly universal or public option.

Just like with pork and earmarks, when it comes to the New Tea Partying American Right, the word hypocrisy gains a whole new mweaning

Anonymous said...

oh, hypocrisy. i get it. like when obama ran as "post partisan" and a unifier, and then when he finally gets around to compromising with the right, his supporters through a hissy fit. kinda like that? my point wasn't tit for tat, it was an honest question, because if the democrats proposed less earmarks then my vote was wasted in november and i would need to reassess who gets my next vote.

Anonymous said...

and macsurf, while your ignorant comments are charming, i have to cry foul on the assessment that "suddenly the mandate is unconstitutional". it was always unconstitutional.

SJS said...

Um, anon, I think you might want to look up the word "hypocrisy."

macsurf said...

Ironically anon, I have always opposed the mandate.

But, not being a constitutional scholar, I can't say whether it's constitutional or not.

I am hoping the whole debate will reopen the door to the possibility we may yet see what the country REALLY needs - a single payer, public option that truly makes health care accessible and affordable for all/