...The Senate’s version of the fiscal 2007 supplemental appropriations bill that passed yesterday includes, among scores of other nonessential items, money for Christmas-tree growers.
Behind all their lofty rhetoric about the Iraq war and bringing home the troops, members of the House and Senate were busy tacking on $20 billion and $18.5 billion respectively in unrelated spending to President Bush’s $103 billion request. (He intends to veto the bill.)
Despite their campaign talk about earmark reform last fall, the new Democratic leadership shamelessly used pork to buy votes — before the vote, Representatives Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Peter DeFazio of Oregon acknowledged that add-ons for their districts would influence their decisions.
See a PDF version of the pork here.
2 comments:
I don't know. It still seems much more like a political decision than a real decision. They knew it was/is going to be vetoed. Especially with all the additional spending, it will have to be. So they can add on whatever they want in order to use it against the people later. Think of what you wrote, like "money for christmas tree growers." Now, next election, they can say that the Republicans are against Christmas. The Republicans did that to the Democrats for years.
First of all, I didn't write the christmas tree line...that came from the NYT article. Second, my point is simply that Democrats and Republicans really aren't that different when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility.
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