Posted on 01/30/2006 4:00:21 AM PST by RWR8189
WASHINGTON -- Sens. John McCain and Tom Coburn may force their colleagues to make an up-or-down public decision on proposals such as tucking $2 million for a public park in San Francisco into the nation's massive military spending bill. Last Dec. 20, this bit of pork was passed by Congress without debate and without a vote in the final version of the Defense Appropriations Act. McCain and Coburn last Wednesday proposed a revolutionary change in the way Congress has done more and more of its business over the past two decades. They announced their intention to "challenge" future earmarks as a violation of Senate rules. That would have meant a roll call vote on each of the 15,268 special spending items in 2005 (nearly a four-fold increase over the previous decade) that individual members quietly slipped into massive bills in the dead of night. McCain, a lonely voice in the Senate battling the bipartisan taste for pork, was joined last year by newly elected Dr. Tom Coburn, the flinty obstetrician from Muskogee, Okla. Even their combined voices probably would not have been heard were it not for the Jack Abramoff lobbyist scandal. Now, the demand for pork by politicians that consumed $27 billion last year could be endangered. Make no mistake that Republicans McCain and Coburn are climbing uphill against a bipartisan pork coalition, as was made clear from both sides of the aisle this week. "Who knows best where to put a bridge or a highway or a red light in their district?" said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, defending earmarks on the Michael Reagan radio program. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on PBS: "There's nothing basically wrong with the earmarks. They've been going on since we were a country." Coburn disputes Reid's history. "Contrary to conventional Beltway wisdom," the freshman senator said, "the pork process is not an ancient tradition that is impossible to change." The 1982 highway bill contained 10 earmarked pork projects; 150 earmarks in the 1987 bill helped provoke a veto by President Reagan; the number rose to 1,400 in 1998, and to 6,300 in 2005. In an age of polarization, addiction to pork cuts across party lines. The $2 million for a public park in the Presidio of San Francisco added to Defense spending benefits the district of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, a leading attacker of Republican fiscal irresponsibility. McCain took the floor last Dec. 20, as he has so many times in the past, with an inattentive Senate prepared to pass a $458 billion Defense Appropriations Bill, including funds for the war in Iraq. "During a war, in a measure designed to give our fighting men and women the funds they need," said McCain, "the Congress has given in to its worst pork-barrel instincts." These were among the earmarks he pointed out: -- $3,850,000 for the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Foundation at Manhattan's Pier 86 on West 46th Street in New York City. The district is represented by liberal Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney. -- $4.4 million for a technology center at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo. This was included in $27.1 million earmarked for Southwest Missouri in this one bill by Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, who is running for the permanent leadership post. -- $500,000 for an outdoor grade-school teaching project ("Summer Science and Adventure Camp") in Boswell, Pa. The district is represented by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who has become a leading critic of President Bush's Iraq policy. -- $500,000 for the Arctic Winter Games, an international sports competition on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. Sen. Ted Stevens, president pro tem of the Senate and chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, determined this was a fitting expenditure for a military supply bill. These are just samples of what McCain and Coburn want to force their colleagues to approve or disapprove. The other senators will hate that ordeal, but neither McCain in his four-term Senate career nor Coburn in his previous six years in the House has ever wanted to win a popularity contest. They can tell the other senators that if they want to avoid the embarrassment of voting on pork, they can stop earmarking.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
And Dr. Coburn is always fighting the good fight in Washington, that's why he's hated by Republicans and despised by Democrats.
Funny how McCain had no problem sliding his Terorist Bill of Rights into the SAME bill using the SAME sleazy tactics he cried about here.
The fact that Coburn is signed on makes me think there will be action.
Dr. Coburn is a man of his word, and I look forward to seeing each senator forced to stand by every single piece of pork they want to make me pay for.
Everyone should contact their representatives ASAP and let them know that the American people are overwhelmingly in support of McCain and Coburn on this issue. Flood their email and mail boxes!!
If Coburn could just find a way to expose McCain's hypocracy and toss him under the bus along the way...
McCain gives the whole thing "legitmacy" in the media, they just can't write off Coburn as some "right wing nut" from Oklahoma when their darling McCain is standing at his side.
Dr. Coburn was not supported in the primary of '04 by the GOP. The good conservative voters of OK put him in office in spite of the GOP establishment. That is what should happen in every state.
And by the way, where IS George Bush's veto stamp? Pres. Reagan, a real conservative, vetoed a bill for having 150 pork-barrel earmarks. Pres. Bush, who is no conservative, signed off on 15,268 pork-barrel payoffs, including $2,000,000 for a new public park for Diane Feinstein in San Francisco. I guess the perverts were over-crowding the old parks...truly a pressing public need. No wonder deficits have ballooned during Bush's administration. You can't have guns and butter, a lesson we should have learned long ago.
I now the Whine all the Time Choir doesn't want to hear any reality but it does NO GOOD for a President to veto spending bills that have all ready passed the Congress with the required votes to override that veto.
How about the Whiners just ONE time remember their BASIC civics education? CONGRESS, not the Executive, holds the purse strings.
Great idea. All the Lobbyists and pressure groups will be telling them to NOT do this. Need to get some noise going for our side.
Though I loathe McCain and can only think that his reasons are merely political posturing for an ill advise second run for the Whitehouse, I believe Congress should be forced to work for a living, staying in session as long as it would take to pass these "special spending" items.
Who knows where best to put a red light in their district indeed!
Tell me, just how does a president explain the veto of a Defense Appropriations Act in the time of war?
My post #13 was meant for kittymyrib.
If it were this easy, why didn't someone try it in the last 30 years? Surely there had to be at least one Senator who gave a damn.
It hasn't gotten this out of control until very recently.
However, one wonders, if he doesn't bring home the pork to Oklahoma, will they reelect him? I hope his principles are strong enough to ignore that possibility.
How about no funding for pork projects while the nation is in a deficit?
This will force every politician to cut out spending so that they can spend. It will also force every politician to actually do what they say they will do or they wilhave to go back to their districts and explain why they couldn't bring home the bacon. This way the citizens win.
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