Every post of yours on this thread has been a waste of time. You haven't contributed anything except personal attacks. Why don't you educate us, oh all knowing one? Just because you ask me questions doens't mean I need to answer them. It's obvious from your attitude that you will argue with anything I say. If I said the sky is blue, you'd have to argue with me about how the light is refracted and that I'm just seeing an illusion.
No More Earmarks , he said.
Discussion in 'Political Debate & Discussion' started by carpro, Dec 15, 2009.
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Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
Discretionary spending (earmarks) can be raised or lowered every year. If we eliminate all earmarks, which is possible as discretionary spending, then the cost of business at the end of the day is less or in other words less spending. The key is to eliminate all earmarks not just specific earmarks.
It is correct to say that if Ron Paul does not take part in earmark spending then it changes nothing because someone else will get those funds. But if all earmark spending has ceased then spending has been greatly reduced.
Here is a source for what discretionary and mandatory spending are -
OK, so what Matt is saying...
...Congress comes up with an amount to spend. Completely undesignated. Then, Congress comes up with earmarks that equal that spending amount.
Sorry. You're 180 degrees off on that one. If you were right, then earmarks would be necessary, as to enumerate the budget. But they're not...they add to it.
But hey, look on the bright side...you're only 100% wrong. :D :D -
How earmarks increase spending on just one budget request:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092803862.html
Cochran says his proposals are based only on "national security interests," not campaign cash. But in providing money for projects that the Defense Department says it did not request and does not want, he has joined a host of other senators on both sides of the aisle. The proposed $636 billion Senate bill includes $2.65 billion in earmarks.
President Obama has repeatedly promised to fight "the special interests, contractors and entrenched lobbyists" that he says have distorted military priorities and bloated appropriations in the past. In August, he told a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that "if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it."
But the White House instead sent a generally supportive message to the Senate about the pending defense bill on Friday, virtually ensuring that the earmarks will win final congressional approval.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113333277
President Obama has promised to clean up the so-called earmarking process that allows lawmakers to insert pet projects into government spending bills. Despite the president's call for change, the defense bill that's making its way through the Senate still sets aside billions of dollars for projects the military says it doesn't need.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2009/sep/defense-bill-loaded-earmarks
Although President Obama has repeatedly vowed to battle the special interests that severely inflated military spending in the past, he supports a proposed defense bill that contains billions in earmarks for projects the Pentagon did not request and does not want.
The $2.6 billion in earmarks will fund highly questionable projects that will largely benefit the financial supporters of the lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, who will vote for the massive $636 billion spending bill. The president’s support practically guarantees that the earmarks will get final congressional approval, according to the newspaper that broke the story this week.
SNIP
The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hawaii Democrat Daniel Inouye, added 37 earmarks of his own worth $208 million. Nearly $70 million will go to entities that donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign, including a Hawaiian healthcare network ($24 million) and Boeing’s operation of the Maui Space Surveillance System ($20 million). Twenty million will go to a civic center named after the late Senator Ted Kennedy, a project that doesn’t seem to justify military spending. -
An explanation of how earmarks increase spending that even a child could understand:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/budget/wm2318.cfm
And by diverting transportation dollars into projects that are often frivolous and having nothing to do with reducing congestion or improving mobility, earmarks starve higher-priorities like road maintenance and construction, which in turn forces Congress to increase spending to replenish that funding.
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