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Post by Rich Fisher on Mar 5, 2009 16:09:05 GMT -4
If you are wondering how your congressional representatives intend to spend millions of dollars in stimulus funds the picture has become clear. According to the "Baltimore Sun" legislators have already earmarked funds for over 200 pet projects. Maryland representatives in Congress from both sides of the political aisle intend to use over 200-million dollars for projects from one end of the state to the other. Among the projects are fixing the MARC system, helping local law enforcement agencies and working on restoring oysters in Chesapeake Bay.
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Post by funnel101 on Mar 5, 2009 18:55:54 GMT -4
What wouldn't count as a pet project?
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Post by dej on Mar 6, 2009 2:42:47 GMT -4
Some of these things are actually useful. The big problem is that when they get rolled into an omnibus spending bill like this, there's really no way to debate the merits of the spending. Just looking the 3 items mentioned in the post, the MARC funding should be discussed as part of a Dept of Transportation bill, federal funding for local law enforcement should be discussed as part of a DOJ spending bill and oyster restoration could actually be discussed as part of an Interior Dept bill, Ag Dept bill, or both.
Also the excuse for letting almost 9,000 earmarks go through is that "It's last years business" just doesn't fly. It may be left over from last year, but it's this year's House & Senate voting to pass it, and this year's President that is going to sign it. In addition, the vast majority of this years Representatives and Senators were the ones that didn't finish last years business to begin with. I guess they needed to carry over into this year to add a couple thousand more items??
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Post by bchevy on Mar 6, 2009 6:27:59 GMT -4
I saw last night where some of these earmarks have been lying in the wings since the 80's, been put into lots of bills that never got passed.
Now they can call it stimulous, it's the new pork, the other white meat.
It's really sickening.
Hey! Did you see that some of these banks that took TARP money are giving it back? It actually hurt their business, by taking the TARP money, they lost business by customers thinking the bank was in trouble, turns out some stiff arm banking regulators "strongly suggested" for these banks to take the money WHEN THEY DID NOT NEED IT!
Government at it's best, hold on it's gonna be a long downhill slide that hasn't even started yet. by by GM.
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Post by Frank on Mar 6, 2009 13:09:57 GMT -4
"It's last years business" What a crock! Obama has been busy un-doing everything Bush put in place - why not this? Wasn't that one of his promises? No more earmarks? I have tried to be supportive and back my president. I've kept my thoughts to myself thinking he really can't be doing this after all those speeches about "Change". I haven't posted on this topic because I want to wait for this change to start. Well, no change, just more of the same. He's looking like another corrupt Chicago politician every day.
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Post by funnel101 on Mar 6, 2009 13:36:20 GMT -4
No one's answered my question yet.
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Post by dej on Mar 7, 2009 4:35:39 GMT -4
You raise a good point. Everything a politician does qualifies as a pet project, whether it's an earmark for their state or district, or supporting a plank of the party platform as part of the party's national agenda.
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