January 11, 2005
TELL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS TO LAY OFF THE PORK
Iëm concerned that pork barrel legislation has spun out of control. The process by which our elected officials set budgets and appropriate funds, which leads to the passage of unabashed pork, does not take into account the worth of a project in the selection process, and clearly favors those states with the most powerful legislators.
According to leading watchdog groups, pork barrel appropriations have grown by over 350 percent over the past decade. Lawmakers arbitrarily pick the winners and losers, which leads to 3,320-page bills that include funding for a $375,000,000.00 million amphibious assault ship for the state of Mississippi, and $100,000.00 to renovate a Coca-Cola building in Macon, Georgia. For these reasons, and thousands upon thousands more, Iím encouraging everyone who reads this post to send letters to their elected representatives in Washington, D.C., demanding that the following recommendations be implimented started with the 109th Congress:
ï Set a maximum number of allowable earmarks at no greater than 50 percent of the previous yearís levels for the next 5 years.
ï Make the name of the requesting member of Congress available along with the earmark in the report accompanying the legislation.
ï Make all of the thousands of member request letters to appropriators available online at the Appropriations Committee web site.
ï Disallow the adding of any earmarks during Congressional conference negotiations.
ï Require joint House-Senate budget agreements to be passed prior to appropriation legislation.
While $200,000.00 for recreational improvements in North Pole, Alaska, or $250,000.00 for the Pinellas County (Florida) Police Athletic League, may seem insignificant in the grand fiscal scheme of the country, such projects represent a corruption of the budgetary process. Too many members of Congress are more concerned about bringing home the bacon for their re-election than they are about the fiscal future of our nation.
The bottom line here is that our country is facing ever-increasing budget deficits, and itís time to start making tough decisions about the nationís fiscal future. The steps outlined above will help rein in wasteful earmarking and are good first steps toward ensuring more responsible federal spending.
Posted by Mikal at January 11, 2005 7:28 AM
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