Why do Democrats Hide Pet Projects From Voters?

Question

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070603/D8PHA8LG0.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - After promising unprecedented openness regarding Congress' pork barrel practices, House Democrats are moving in the opposite direction as they draw up spending bills for the upcoming budget year.

Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify "earmarks" - lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states.

Rather than including specific pet projects, grants and contracts in legislation as it is being written, Democrats are following an order by the House Appropriations Committee chairman to keep the bills free of such earmarks until it is too late for critics to effectively challenge them.


This s pretty sneaky if you ask me...

Answer 1

That is what they campaigned own, to correct the corruption of Congress and now they are doing just what they said they would stop.

Hypocrites.

Answer 2

Only a Republican would say
THEIR pork extra's are not sneaky
and downright WASTEFUL!!!

August 4, 2005

AT $286.4 BILLION, the highway bill just passed by Congress is the MOST EXPENSIVE public works legislation in US HISTORY. In addition to funding the interstate highway system and other federal transportation programs, it sets a NEW RECORD FOR PORK-BARREL SPENDING, earmarking $24 billion for a staggering 6,376 pet projects, spread among virtually every congressional district in the land. The enormous bill -- 1,752 pages long -- wasn't made public until just before it was brought to a vote,

It passed 412 to 8 in the House, 91 to 4 in the Senate.

The bill funnels upward of $941 million to 119 earmarked projects in Alaska, including $223 million for a mile-long bridge linking an island with 50 residents to the town of Ketchikan on the mainland. Another $231 million is earmarked for a new bridge in Anchorage, to be named -- this is specified in the legislation -- Don Young's Way. There is $3 million for a film ''about infrastructure that demonstrates advancements in Alaska, the last frontier."

Meander through the bill's endless line items and you find a remarkable variety of ''highway" projects, many of which have nothing to do with highways: Horse riding facilities in Virginia ($600,000). A snowmobile trail in Vermont ($5.9 million). Parking for New York's Harlem Hospital ($8 million). A bicycle and pedestrian trail in Tennessee ($532,000). A daycare center and park-and-ride facility in Illinois ($1.25 million). Dust control mitigation for rural Arkansas ($3 million). The National Packard Museum in Ohio ($2.75 million). A historical trolley project in Washington ($200,000).

And on and on and on.

Arizona Senator John McCain, who voted no, called the bill a ''monstrosity" and wondered whether it will ever be possible to restore fiscal sanity to the REPUBLICAN Congress. If ''the combination of war, record deficits, and the largest public debt in the country's history" can't break REPUBLICAN lawmakers' addiction to spending, he asked, what can? ''It would seem that this REPUBLICAN Congress can weather any storm thrown at it, as long as we have our REPUBLICAN pork life-saver to cling to.

GOP means...
Government OVERSPENDING Party

Answer 3

Do you mean like the republican congressman from Alaska who put his 250 million dollar pork barrel bridge to no where in a bill. The republicans run on smaller government not the democrats which makes them hypocrites. at least the Dem's don't out right lie to the American public.

Answer 4

the socialists ran for congress on a marketing campaign of correcting the subculture of corruption THEY LIED So in case you voted for a dem this autumn, do you experience which you have been lied to and cheated? yet once you're brainwashed you will vote for them lower back won't you. The Socialists are the subculture of corruption, pelosi, clinton, reid, feinstein, murtha, the checklist of merely the lastest corruptions is virutally infinite. what did pelosi save asserting maximum efficient as much as the election? "while we are on top of issues" she ought to have pronounced it one hundred cases. sounds like a administration freak in case you hold balloting for an identical human beings awaiting diverse outcomes, properly it is insane.

Answer 5

Both parties are equally guilty of pork barrel spending. Pork barrel spending will only stop when ALL POLITICIANS from both parties are held accountable!

Answer 6

Almost all politicians have a private personal agenda regardless of political affiliation. And if they don't, and they really have our well being (those that actually vote for them) they don't get very far in the political world.

Answer 7

Vote Libertarian, get rid of pork

Answer 8

It no worse than when the repukes we in control. Thats just the way politics bounces. Federal government needs to be overhauled so that it listens to its citizens not $$$$$.

Answer 9

My dear your party holds the record for pork in the last congress.

Answer 10

Well the President's advisers have managed to use every excuse in the book to find loopholes in checks and balances. So I would say that they are simply following the example set by our nation's leader.