The Earmark Stimulus bill
Bookworm on Mar 06 2009 at 4:46 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Much is being made of the fact that Obama, who promised to cut earmarks, is poised to sign a bill that has something like 9,000 earmarks. Of course, that’s chicken feed compared to the bill’s real purpose, which is to expand government at an exponential rate unknown in American history.
It therefore occurred to me that the ire over yet another Obama lie is misplaced. Considering that the earmarks, unlike the main spending, would actually fund some local, quasi- or non-governmental endeavors (real pump priming), I suggest that we keep the earmarks and scrap the rest of the bill.
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From my post new-age earmarks:
Yesterday, Joe Biden was holding forth on how the Obama administration will ensure that earmarks are kept out of the various economic-stimulus bills that the administration will be introducing.
It’s actually possible that he means what he says, as far as the traditional kind of earmark goes–that is, a provision for specific spending, in a specific geographical area, at the behest of a particular Congressman.
But in a broader sense, much of the economic policy of the incoming Obama administration seems to be centered around earmarks, albeit earmarks of a different kind. Instead of Congressional-district-based earmarks, we will have SIC-code-based earmarks (SIC code=standard industrial classification), providing benefits to particular industries, and reverse-bill-of-attainder earmarks, directed in favor of particular named companies or small groups of companies.
[...] Keep The Earmarks, Lose The Stimulus Bill [...]
The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, had this to say, and it’s spot-on about the Porkulus Spendulus and BudgetBuster bills:
“The illusion that government can be a universal provider, and yet society still stay free and prosperous…. The illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the effort.”