Three little pork projects - totaling “only” about $1.3 million - were spared yesterday by the United States Senate. Below is a vote tally on the pork amendment and two others which sought to restrain Congressional pork projects in favor of repairing deficient bridges. All three votes were to table, or kill, the amendment being debated. So a “YEA” vote is a bad vote.
Amendment 2810 would have prohibited spending on pork projects until all deficient roads and bridges are repaired. A “YEA” vote was a vote to fund pork projects rather than bridges. Here are the names of the 14 senators who voted “NO.”
Barrasso (R-WY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Grassley (R-IA)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Amendment 2811 would have prohibited spending federal transportation funds on bike paths. A “YEA” vote was a vote to build bike paths with federal transportation dollars instead of repairing bridges with that money. Here are the names of the 18 senators who voted “NO.”
Allard (R-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Martinez (R-FL)
Sessions (R-AL)
Vitter (R-LA)
And finally, Amendment 2812 would have stripped three earmarks from the bill: $500,000 for a new baseball stadium in Montana, $450,000 for the International Peace Garden in North Dakota, and $400,000 to construct a “Discovery Center” for tourists in Louisiana. A “YEA” vote was a vote to fund all three pork projects. Here’s the list of the 32 senators who voted “NO.”
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Coleman (R-MN)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
The problem is spending. The problem is Congress. The problem is…how do you stop them?
Posted on September 13th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
Vote them all out …. get rid of them….
start over.
Thanks, Chuck!
I note that these amendments were on H.R. 3074, the FY 2008, Transportation Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill.
What really caught my eye was the vote on Amendment 2810, that all bridges got fixed before earmarks were approved.
Of the 14 Senator’s that voted “NO”, only 6 of them didn’t have earmarks on this appropriations bill (Barrasso,Coburn,Corker,DeMint,Feingold,McCaskill). The remaining eight Senators had a combined 62 earmarks, including John Ensign’s 9 earmarks. All told these eight Senator’s earmarks are valued at North of $100,000,000.
Now why would these 8 Senators vote for a bill that would kill their earmarks? Maybe because they knew the motion to table would fail anyway and then they could later claim, on mailers and and TV, that they voted to rebuild America’s bridges before they would fund pork projects? “What a good little fiscal conservative I am, I was against earmarks while I had earmarks!”
Source: taxpayer.net…Senate earmarks on Transportation and HUD.