Democrats Pork Up Spending Bill

[red states rule]

I thought Dems ran on ending pork? They did attack Republicans for excessive spending and pork projects

Well, Dems are showing they are better then the Republicans when it comes to spending your money.

Is this why we need to tax increases? To cover Dem pork

Remember folks, this is the pork in only ONE spending bill


Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Democrats Pork Up Spending Bill

The House is preparing to vote on a masssive spending bill for the Departments of Labor, HHS, and other agencies. According to CQ, Congressional Democrats assert that they've reduced pork-barrel earmark spending by 40%-50%, but have not provided a tally that supports the claim. CQ meanwhile, finds more than 2,200 earmarks in the legislation:



A Congressional Quarterly analysis of the conference report on the measure, released Monday night, counts more than 2,200 earmarks and special projects totaling more than $1 billion. That is about seven-tenths of one percent of the bill’s total discretionary spending of $150.7 billion. The bill would fund the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education in fiscal 2008, plus several independent agencies, including the Social Security Administration.

The legislation was cleared for public review last night. Republican leader Boehner lists some of the projects funded in the bill:


Hybrid loaner cars for staffers wishing to run errands or catch a movie during work hours.

$520,000 (or $10,000 per week) in extra electricity funds to “absolve sins” by purchasing renewable, not traditional, electricity.

The installation of a private E-85 gas station for Members on the Capitol grounds, lest Members have to drive elsewhere to full up.

Segway personal transporters.

$2.7 million to switch fuels for the Capitol power plant from coal to natural gas (even while 63 million American households use natural gas to heat their homes, but get nothing in the Democrats’ “energy” bill to increase supplies and lower prices).

“Climate neutral” adhesive, sealants, paints, coating, and carpets.


Read also the Club for Growth, which points out that the Democratic leadership won't promise that there have been no new earmarks added into this bill after it passed both the House and Senate.

If this is such a good bill, why can't the American people have more than 24 hours to review it?

As long as we're on the topic of pork, check out the latest Google maps app -- on where pork goes.

http://influencepeddler.blogspot.com/2007/11/democrats-pork-up-spending-bills.html

[red states rule]

I am looking forward to the libs trying to spin this

They want to screw the troops in Iraq and deny them their money, but their pork will never go without


Senate Picks Pork Over Kids

The Senate just voted 68-26 to kill the amendment offered by Senator Tom Coburn that would have redirected earmarks in the Labor/HHS/Education appropriation to funding health care for children instead. The failure of the Senate to pass Amendment 3358 today shows a large disconnect between the rhetoric of the majority in Congress and their actual priorities. After castigating the Bush administration for vetoing a massive expansion of the S-CHIP program to middle-class families who largely don't need it, two-thirds of the Senate seems more interested in their own pork than in America's children.

Don't expect this to get much attention from the American media. However, they will continue to report on efforts by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to contrast the S-CHIP expansion veto to war funding, as the Post reported today in its article on Bush's new supplemental funding request for the war. Democrats accuse the President of having his priorities backward, but the Iraq war effort hopes to create a stable, moderate, and democratic Iraq that will partner with us against terrorism and make the region safer. That falls within our national-security and foreign policy interests.

What exactly does the pork in the Labor/HHS/Education bill do? It funds Charles Rangel's Monument to Me to the tune of $2 million, for one thing. That apparently has a higher priority in the Senate than health care for children. It also includes $500,000 for the National Council on La Raza from Tom Harkin (D-IA). Porkmaster Ted Stevens (R-AK) gets $34.5 million for an Alaska Native educational equity assistance program, one of the largest earmarks in the bill.

Priorities. That's what the Democrats like to argue when they want to strip American troops of needed funding for a mission that has demonstrated growing success. When it comes to protecting their own pork-barrel mechanisms to protect their incumbencies, the health of children be damned.

UPDATE II: Here are a few other earmarks that come before the Democratic talking point of children's health care, as noted by Senator Coburn in his statement today:

* $400,000 for Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, for exhibits, education programs, and community outreach;

* $100,000 for a celebration around Lake Champlain in Vermont;

* $500,000 for field trips in the Chesapeake Bay;

* $500,000 for the “Virtual Herbarium” in New York;

* $50,000 for an ice center in Utah; and

* $130,000 for the National First Ladies’ Library Catalogue in Ohio.

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/015292.php

[Psychoblues]

Considering that no one else can answer you and you are relegated to answering yourself with only more ridiculous information, should I remind you that 99.99% of that bill is for the financing of REPUBLICAN pork and otherwise bullshit?

[82Marine89]

99.99%? :link: Please.

[Psychoblues]

I have never made it a practise to prove anything to idiots that complain about pennies while their dollars magically disappear.




99.99%? :link: Please.

That's a job left better to the politicians that get by with legal rape.

[82Marine89]

I have never made it a practise to prove anything to idiots that complain about pennies while their dollars magically disappear.


That's a job left better to the politicians that get by with legal rape.

IOW, you made it up and can't prove it.

[Psychoblues]

Wanna bet?



IOW, you made it up and can't prove it.

Ask your neorepuke congressman to give you a spreadsheet. Post it and I will remind you of the 99.99% claim that I make. I don't pretend to cure your ignorance on my own.

[PostmodernProphet]

Wanna bet?

yes, huge amounts.....

from the Citizens Against Government Waste report on the current defense bill.....


Here are some of the more egregious pork projects added to the defense bill:

* $25,000,000 for the Hawaii Federal Health Care Network, added by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).
* $23,000,000 for the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), added by Rep. John “Jack” Murtha (D-Pa.). This is the project over which Rep. Murtha threatened a colleague for challenging in the spring. Since 1992, more than $509 million has been used to fund NDIC, which is administered by the Department of Justice (DOJ.). Ironically, DOJ does not want the NDIC and has asked Congress to shut the agency down because the department believes the operations are duplicative.
* *$20,000,000 for historically black colleges and universities, added by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
* $5,000,000 for Project SOAR, added by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).
* *$5,000,000 for the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Paralympic Military Program, added by Reps. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) and Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.).
* $4,800,000 for the Jamaica Bay Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area added by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). The Gateway National Recreation Area’s website describes the Jamaica Bay Unit as “a wealth of history, nature and recreation, from New York City's first major airport and coastal fortifications to a wildlife refuge and pristine beaches.”
* *$3,000,000 for “The First Tee,” added by House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) The program’s mission, according to its website, is “To impact the lives of young people by providing learning facilities and educational programs that promote character development and life-enhancing values through the game of golf.” First Tee won CAGW’s “The Taxpayers Get Teed Off” Oinker Award in 2004 for receiving $3 million in two separate appropriations bills.
* $2,400,000 for the Lewis Center for Education Research, added by its namesake, House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.). The center is described on its website as “a unique educational facility designed to improve educational effectiveness and scientific literacy among American schoolchildren.”
* $2,400,000 for the Vertical Lift Center of Excellence-Institute of Maintenance, Science and Technology, added by Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.).
* $2,000,000 for brown tree snakes, added by Sen. Inouye, which has been a staple in the Congressional Pig Book since 1996.
* $1,600,000 for the New York Structural Biology Center, added by Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), and Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The center’s mission, according to its website, is to “increase our understanding of the role that proteins play in disease pathways and enhance the ability of scientists to carry out advanced biomedical research in a number of areas including the new fields of structural genomics, and proteomics.”
* $1,600,000 for the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), added by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) himself.
* $1,600,000 for the Allen Telescope Array, added by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.). This project first appeared in the 2005 Congressional Pig Book and has received a total of $5.6 million. It is part of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which describes the telescope as “dedicated to astronomical and simultaneous search for extra-terrestrial intelligence observations.”
* $1,600,000 for the development of enabling chemical technologies for power from green sources, added by Rep. John Olver (D-Mass.).
* $1,200,000 for the National Bureau for Asian Research, “a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution dedicated to informing and strengthening policy in the Asia-Pacific,” according to its website, added by Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.).
* $1,000,000 for transforming waste plastics into alterative fuels, added by Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio).
* $800,000 for extended shelf life produce for remotely deployed forces, added by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.). This sounds suspiciously like a 2007 Congressional Pig Book project: $1,650,000 added by Senate appropriator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to improve the shelf life of vegetables.
* *$500,000 for the Maine Institute for Human Genetics, described on its website as “blending inventive research with emerging concepts in clinical care in rural communities,” added by Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine).

additionally, their scorecard on congressional porkers consistently shows that the top wasters are ALWAYS Democrats, even when the Republicans controlled Congress....

http://councilfor.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_Ratings_Intro