Obama, Hillary & McCain Say No To Earmarks…
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary, Legislation, McCain, Money…but only for one year.
WASHINGTON – Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday joined Republican presidential candidate John McCain and a small band of GOP senators in making a run this week against the billions of dollars in home-state pet projects Congress funds each year.Obama, locked in a head-to-head battle with Clinton for the Democratic nomination, was the first to declare through a spokesman Monday that he would support a one-year moratorium on so-called earmarks when it comes up for a vote later this week. Clinton followed shortly afterward through a spokesman.
McCain is really the one with the gleaming record on this. He requested no earmarks last year, while Both Obama and Clinton secured a TON of money for their states last year (approx. $100M and $340M respectively).
However, Paul Silver has this to say about the GOP’s record on earmarks as a while…
But while the GOP would like to think that they are seizing this issue to their advantage I would point out that it was under GOP control that earmarks exploded out of reason, and now, under Democratic leadership, it is being contained.
Is this true? Anybody got some data? I can’t find anything on the internets to back this up.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary, Legislation, McCain, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:43 am
It is true, earmarks are down. I’ll see if can find the data. But it was not “Democratic leadership” that is the reason. It is the fact that we have divided government again. You can attribute the drop in earmarks as much to presidential veto threats as you can to any restraint by the Dems.
The real test will be when we head into 2009 with expanded Democratic party majorities in the both Houses of Congress, a potential filibuster-proof Democratic super majority in the Senate, and a Democratic president flexing the pumped up biceps of new unitary executive branch power – courtesy of Dick Cheney’s six years of steroid injections. Avoiding that scenario is the single best reason to vote for McCain in the fall.