Redstate

I get the emails and I'm on board, 'nuff said! I'm glad McCain is on the bus out of earmarkland also.

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and a good point to make on the campaign trail particularly against the likely Dem nominee, Big Bucks Barack, whose ambition is only limited by your wallet.

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

Just one.

is having a very good week.

Pam

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4359635&page=1

Drudge linked to this ABC story; McCain continues to pound Obama, and states clearly that Obama doesn't represent change, but rather 1970's liberalism. Go, Johnny, Go!

I hope McCain was serious about lobbying his fellow senators on this one. There is a big difference between saying you support an amendment and actually getting in the face of pork-loving senators.

He needs to get his fellow Repubs to clean up their act on this issue. If he could do that, it would become very embarrassing for the Dems...plus it is just plain the right thing to do.

Last year Democrats passed nearly 12,000 earmarks costing more than $17 billion -- figures that far surpassed totals from a year earlier.

What data do you base this statement on and what years are you comparing? While the appropriate level of earmarks per year by a financially disciplined government is indisputably zero, I'm led to believe that earmark expenditures decreased from 2006 to 2007:

For fiscal 2006, appropriators stuffed 9,963 projects into the 11 appropriations bills, a 29 percent decrease over last year’s total of 13,997. Despite the reduction in the number of earmarks, Congress porked out at record dollar levels with $29 billion in pork for 2006, or 6.2 percent more than last year’s total of $27.3 billion. [Citizens Against Government Waste]

All spending bills passed in 2007 included some 11,000 earmarks. Those earmarks totaled more than $14 billion in cost, and included wasteful spending for items such as a $20 million ferry in Alaska to connect Anchorage with Port MacKenzie — benefiting just 40 people who work in Port MacKenzie. [Mike Pence editorial, Washington Times]

Are all 2008 earmarks already tallied, and is 2008 earmark spending higher than 2007? That would be positively cringe worthy, but (R)'s really dug a steep hole for themselves with those heady years of "unified government" under a fiscally irresponsible executive, with the $20+ billion spends.

At any rate, I like McCain's style on this: BIG promises. A veto for any bill containing an earmark would be fantastic to see, and it's hard to imagine McCain would renege given the fact that it would be such a blatant break of a campaign promise. He's got a big challenge ahead trying to convince (D)'s and (R)'s to go along but at least the act of veto could be entirely in his hands.

I'd suggest he go one step further, and cover both sides of this coin: stop all the earmarking (including the kind that occurs from the Oval Office), and insist that the $18 billion or so per year be returned to American citizens in the form of an across the board tax cut - as opposed to simply throwing that cash at some other government growth initiative.

FDT's Principles

Good for John to get out in front on this one.