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United States News Title: Omnibus includes $8B in earmarks Three hundred fifty thousand dollars for cool-season legume research in Idaho, North Dakota and Washington. A half million dollars for road roundabouts in Mississippi. And $1 million for arthropod damage in Nevada. They’re just a few of the 6,600 pet projects lawmakers from both parties – and both chambers – stuck inside an enormous spending bill unveiled by Senate Democrats on Tuesday, according to government watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense. The release of the $1.1 trillion dollar omnibus bill, including $8 billion in earmarks, quickly reignited the fight over pork-barrel spending in the final days of the lame-duck session. Shortly after the Nov. 2 election, Senate Republicans united their caucus and passed a two-year ban on congressional pork. Their colleagues in the House extended their moratorium a couple days later. But the spending plan contains hundreds of millions of dollars worth of earmarks requested by Republicans, including from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) himself. Earlier this year, McConnell asked for $4 million for marijuana eradication efforts by the Kentucky National Guard; $1 million for construction of the Kentucky Blood Center Building; and $650,000 for Advanced Genetic Technologies, a DNA research center at the University of Kentucky. When reporters asked about his earmark requests Tuesday, McConnell said he was “actively working to defeat” the massive omnibus bill since the Senate never had a chance to take up individual appropriations bills. “I think there are many Senate members who have provisions in it for their states who are also actively working to defeat it. This bill should not go forward,” he said. "And regardless of whether members had some input in the bill much earlier in the year when the bills could have been moved to the floor bill by bill by bill, it is completely and totally inappropriate to wrap all of this up into a 2,000-page bill and try to pass it the week before Christmas." “It's completely inappropriate. I'm vigorously in opposition to it. And most of the members of the [Appropriations] committee are as well,” McConnell added. Jon Summers, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said he was surprised Republicans were “up in arms” over earmarks in the omnibus, noting that every request can be viewed online and that spending directed by Congress is down 75 percent since the GOP was in control in 2006. “Why is that?” Summers asked in a statement. “Because Democrats enacted earmark reform that required more transparency, including the requirement that senators put their names next to earmarks they request. Someone should call them out on this hypocrisy.” Some of the most visible earmark requests belonged to Democrats. Five House Democrats requested a $10 million earmark to build the John P. Murtha Center for Public Service at the University of Pittsburgh. And two Massachusetts Democrats, Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Ed Markey, requested $8 million for construction of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake and, two Arizona Republicans who long have crusaded against earmarks, blasted the nearly 2,000-page omnibus bill, saying it ignores the will of voters who made clear last month Congress needs to rein in government spending and debt. The American people “are tired of wasteful spending. They are tired of big government. They are tired of sweetheart deals for special interests. They are tired of business as usual in Washington,” McCain said on the Senate floor. “And they are tired of massive bills – just like this one - put together behind closed doors, and rammed through the Congress at the last moment so that no one has the opportunity to read them and no one really knows what kind of waste is in them.” Added Flake: “This omnibus was written as if the election in November never happened. Voters explicitly rejected runaway spending. Congress clearly didn’t get the message. If President Obama did, he will veto this bill.”
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#1. To: All (#0)
let me guess - the November election was an affirmation that voters want GOP earmarks.
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