Earmarks, Bailouts, Stimulus spending, oh my!

Some things are like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

I am on the plan returning from a trip to Washington, DC attending the Code Red rally against a government-run health care program. (It was a huge success – over 5,000 people show up at a moment’s notice, then storm the Senate office buildings.)

I almost miss my plane, already on Texas time and thinking I had an hour I didn't have. I hear my name announced over the PA (never a good sign) and walked out of the news stand. I'm thinking now I may have forgotten to pay for my newspaper (wondering – how do I send them my money? I don't look good in orange jumpsuits) and open the Washington Times to see a story on earmarks. Earmarks!

Didn’t President Obama – then candidate Obama – promise to end such a practice? Didn’t he promise transparency? Didn’t he promise change? The only change I see is coming out of my pocket.

You might recall, we at AFP sponsored the Ending Earmarks Express tour a couple of years ago, traveling to such sites as the teapot museum (thanks, American taxpayers, for your generosity in funding that expansion) and see that Congress isn’t satisfied spending the stimulus money.

No, they are back at sharing our limited wealth – your tax dollars – with projects we don’t know about, won’t visit, and would rather not fund.

This time it is a library in Jamestown, S.C. The Washington Times reported this on the front page today. Seems Cong. James E. Clyburn got a request for $50,000 for a one-room library. That’s not enough, he must have thought, so he earmarked $100,000 for their computers and bookshelves. Being a congressman, he knows better than the head – likely only – librarian just what that library needs.

So Congress okays the $100,000 earmark – twice what was requested (which was likely twice what the librarian needed or expected.)

Then Congress proceeds to fund the Jamestown, CA library, not Jamestown, NC. It’s a small 2,700 mile geographic mistake.

So goes how our tax dollars are spent. Misspent. Wasted. All to buy votes and favor back home. All out of our hard-earned paychecks.

And we are even CONSIDERING the government running 1/6th of our economy -- our health care system. "This heart is earmarked for my constituent..." and it ends up several thousands of miles away -- going to the wrong person. I can picture it now, but I digress.

Ending earmarks? We need to launch that tour again. Here we are fighting to kill a government take-over of 1/6th of our US economy, fight to keep a bureaucrat from getting between you and your doctor, fight to stop capping our prosperity and sending our jobs to China, stop labor union thugs from bullying nonunion shops into organizing, and the list goes on.

Fellow Patriots, our work is cut out for us. Have a little Merriment, turkey and dressing, family frivolity and solemn celebration then be ready to start the new year with sleeves rolled up, recharged and reinvigorated.

But before we head off for the holiday, let's kill the bill. This is one train wreck we must avoid.

-- Peggy Venable