Conservatives keep hoping against hope that the current GOP members of the Congress learned their lesson in 2006 when voters returned them to the minority in both the House and the Senate, thanks in no small part to their failure to control spending. But that hope is a pipe dream. Republicans deserved to lose their majority in 2006 and continued demonstrating this week why they still don’t deserve to get it back.
At their annual retreat in the mountains of West Virginia on Friday, House Republicans considered a plan by a group of conservative members to adopt a yearlong moratorium on earmarks in order to reduce pork-barrel spending. Rumor has it they considered the earmark moratorium for almost an entire thirty seconds.
But in the end, the GOP spendaholics opted not to lead on this issue, but to send a wimpy little letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging that “a bipartisan select committee should be immediately established for the purpose of identifying ways to bring fundamental change to the way in which Washington spends taxpayers’ money.” As if.
Business as usual for the GOP. Some people just never learn. It’s looking like the nation is going to have to hit rock bottom - meaning another Clinton presidency - before Republican “leaders” finally wake up and smell the coffee. God help us.
Posted on January 26th, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
I have called the office of Rep. Boehner to ask that Rep. Jeff Flake be appointed to the Appropriations Committee. I think all the people who think earmarks are not good for our economy should contact their representatives to urge them to support Representative Jeff Flake for the unoccupied seat on the House Appropriation Committee.
Allan J. Fritz
COL, USA (Ret.)
I did that too, a few days ago.
Who has the pool on weather of not they listen to us?
I also called my Congressman Rodney P. Frelinghuysen with the suggestion to appoint Rep. Jeff Flake to the Appropriations committee. Your readers may reach their Representatives at 202-224-3121.
Jeff Flake was not appointed to Appropriations Committee.
Again, all talk (”we have learned our lesson”) and no action from our GOP leaders. Why? Because members of congress reward their donors with government contracts and thus continue the cyle of candidate donation, government contract. “Pay to Play” is real; it’s what pays the bill for candidate advertising!
And, congressmembers “bring home the bacon” to the electorate. No matter how conservative, self reliant, small government we talk, the truth is, as is demonstrated by our own Dean Heller, we say we don’t like taxes, we want smaller government, and yet, we ask the federal government (and Heller asks and delivers) federal money (taxpayer money obstensively ‘donated’ for running the federal government) for our own waste water treatment plant (one example of the numerous earmarks he has inserted in spending bills that he later votes against). This waste water treatment grant was just approved, and the city that got the money knows who they are.
A community that cannot even provide for the diposal of their own human excrement without the assistance of the federal government, a community that claims for itself the Republican values of small government, self-reliance, the end of public welfare and the need for lower taxes, needs to look in the mirror and see if the problem is not ‘us’! How sorry is a community is that cannot even provide for their own waste diposal without the assistance of the whole of the federal government?! I quess there is no shame.
I have seen the enemy, and it is us.