Didn’t Obama Promise NO Earmarks?
Dec 18, 2009 Political
During the campaign for the presidency John McCain attacked the earmark process. McCain was in a good position to do so since he has used earmarks little, if at all. Barack Obama was one of the big time spenders with earmarks but he stopped using them because they were a liability. Then he took the same tough stance as McCain.
Just before Obama took office he promised an end to earmarks. He said he would not sign bills with earmarks in them and he specifically said that the stimulus would have NO earmarks. Remember, he was the guy bringing a new kind of politics to DC (the Chicago way, perhaps).
On his second day in Washington, President-elect Obama met with his budget team and promised no earmarks will be in the stimulus plan.
“We are going to ban all earmarks — the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review,” he explained. “We will create an economic recovery oversight board made up of key administration officials and independent advisors [sic] to identify problems early and make sure we are doing all we can to solve it.” MSNBC First Read Jan 6, 2009
The stimulus passed and it had earmarks in it. PolitiFact reports that they were there but only a small number. Maybe I am being too literal but “No earmarks” means NONE to me, not a small number of them.
Then the omnibus bill was passed and it had a ton of earmarks. There were nearly 9000 earmarks in that bill and Obama, the one who was going to end the earmark process, signed it. But that was only once and we will get it right from now on.
The Congress just passed a 1.1 trillion dollar spending bill and Obama signed it. So how did the guy who was going to end earmarks do on this one?
There were 5000 earmarks in this bill totaling 3.9 billion dollars.
This is a disgrace. It is bad enough when earmarks are added during good times but this country is on life support and we are out of money. We are borrowing money from China to pay our bills and the annual interest we pay on the loans is enough to completely fund several government agencies for the entire year. Adding earmarks to a bill when we are in such a bad way financially is irresponsible and demonstrates a complete disregard for our financial well being. It is wrong and Obama should have vetoed it.
Instead, he broke his promise and signed the bill, earmarks and all.
Another broken promise.
How is that Hope and Change working out for ya?
Related:
NPR
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Tags: Democrats, earmarks, financial crisis, lies, Obama
To DC or Not To DC, That Is The Question
Sep 26, 2008 Political
John McCain suspended his campaign activities in order to return to DC and do the job we are paying him to do. The nation faces a financial crisis right now and the politicians are having trouble coming up with a plan to stop the bleeding in our economy and financial markets. Harry Reid specifically requested that McCain come back to Washington though he changed his mind when he found out Barack Obama was not happy about it. There was no doubt McCain would return because he puts the country first. The question was, would Obama return.
Barack Obama answered that when he said that he had a cell phone and if he was needed they could call. I guess since votes of “present” don’t count, he was not needed. This situation calls for leadership and this is why Harry Reid called for McCain:
“We need, now, the Republicans to start producing some votes for us. We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands and what we should do.”
Harry Reid is the Leader of the Senate but he said that he needed McCain to tell them “what we should do.” As Ed Morrissey pointed out, Reid did not say that he needed Obama to tell them what they should do. When Harry Reid needed a leader he bypassed Obama and called for McCain.
The Obama campaign and its surrogates are saying that this is a political stunt by McCain. Reid called for him and he responded but after he did Reid changed his mind so the question is, who is playing politics?
I heard Obamabots throughout the day saying that a deal was nearly reached before McCain got there and then McCain messed it up. The reality is, both chambers had not agreed on a bill. The Senate had a plan but the House had not agreed to it. They were not close to a deal because there are many points of contention with the bill. One in particular is this:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
It appears to me as if the Democrats, the majority party, don’t want to make decisions because they are potentially political disasters that could come back to haunt them in the election. They are trying to pin this on Republicans by making them take the decisions and support the bill. Republicans are refusing to give in on a bad bill.
Obama said that a president should be able to multi-task so there is no need to go to DC when they can be involved by phone. Maybe if Senator Obama spent more time doing his job he would know that a Senator has to be physically present to vote (otherwise he could not vote present). Besides, if Obama wants us to believe he can fix the economy, what better way to show us?
Obama is more interested in debating than working on a crisis in this country. I wonder if 9/11 had happened during a campaign like this, would Obama’s actions be the same as they are now? I would say that they would. Hours after McCain announced his return to DC, Obama’s campaign sent out an email that said the American people only have 40 days left to decide so it is important for the debate to go off as planned. It closes with this:
“This is an important time, and we have to keep this campaign focused on the crucial issues.”
What is a more important issue, addressing the financial problem or debating? Why must the debate go off as planned when Obama refused 10 other debates? Why is it more important to keep the campaign focused on critical issues rather than keeping the Senator focused on the critical issues like say, a financial meltdown? By making this statement Obama has shown that his campaign comes first and the country second. Maybe we would not question his commitment or patriotism if his actions were more like a committed patriot and less egocentric.
Barack Obama only cares about winning. He has spent half of his political life campaigning for another office. This is particularly true with regard to this campaign since he has spent more time on the road pandering for votes than he has working in the Senate (143 days on the job).
Is it too much to ask that he take time away from the campaign trail to do the job that we are paying him to do?
No worries Barry. The Senate leader knows who to call for real leadership and America now knows who puts the country first.
Tags: country, debate, duty, financial crisis, honor, McCain, Obama