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It's nice to have Republicans concerned about Congressional corruption once again after 13 years. Maybe after the '08 elections we can get you guys to reconsider the expanded powers of the Executive Branch.
Ah, Yes. Bring on some more of that openness.
Democrats Hide Pet Projects From Voters
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Jun 3, 7:20 AM (ET)
By ANDREW TAYLOR
WASHINGTON (AP) - After promising unprecedented openness regarding Congress' pork barrel practices, House Democrats are moving in the opposite direction as they draw up spending bills for the upcoming budget year.
Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify "earmarks" - lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states.
Rather than including specific pet projects, grants and contracts in legislation as it is being written, Democrats are following an order by the House Appropriations Committee chairman to keep the bills free of such earmarks until it is too late for critics to effectively challenge them.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., says those requests for dams, community grants and research contracts for favored universities or hospitals will be added to spending measures in the fall. That is when House and Senate negotiators assemble final bills.
Such requests total billions of dollars.
As a result, most lawmakers will not get a chance to oppose specific projects as wasteful or questionable when the spending bills for various agencies get their first votes in the full House in June.
The House-Senate compromise bills due for final action in September cannot be amended and are subject to only one hour of debate, precluding challenges to individual projects.
Obey insists he is reluctantly taking the step because Appropriations Committee members and staff have not had enough time to fully review the 36,000 earmark requests that have flooded the committee.
What Obey is doing runs counter to new rules that Democrats promised would make such spending decisions more open.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070603/D8PHA8LG0.html
It's nice to have Republicans concerned about Congressional corruption once again after 13 years. Maybe after the '08 elections we can get you guys to reconsider the expanded powers of the Executive Branch.
Yup.
Where were conservative journalists for the last 6 years?
Oh yeah, that's right, nothing wasteful happened in the last 6 years to worry about.
Hey, it was the dimm-o-craps like you all that kept harping on
culture of corruption and open government. You got it,
dimm-o-crap style. Ah, yes, the 40 years of dimm-o-craps
rule. Them were the good old days and you got them back.
Now don't you feel better?
So Republicans don't care about corruption and open government at all.
Nice to know.
^^Nope, we got people like you to sweat that kind of stuff and
of course your hero's: Nancy (Ms America) Pelosi and the
real estate guy, Harry Reid. Yeah, what a bunch or real red
bloodied Americans to keep things on the straight (ooops) and
narrow.
Maybe after another 40 years of the two parties trading control of congress you might be blessed with the epiphany that corruption is a bipartisan phenomenom.
And the Republicans did what in that area?
Well said, I couldn't agree more. Its because of this that groups such as this are around. Corruption has taken control of our government on both sides. Without reform we are going to have the same movie with a different cast over and over again.
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