By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Ediorial Page columnist
Barack Obama said Tuesday he won't allow Congress to stuff its next stimulus plan with costly earmarks.
What a naive warning from the president elect.
Of course the bill will have earmarks. Congress will be under tremendous pressure from states and cities -- Kansas City among them -- to pump hundreds of billions toward special projects sought by governments.
In fact, in the rush to spend money and stimulate the economy, the next bill out of Washington will receive even less scrutiny per dollar used than most spending plans that come out of Washington.
Now that's scary.
Congress is going to hardly listen to Obama's brave words of Tuesday: "We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review.... We're not going to be able to expect the American people to support this critical effort unless we take extraordinary steps to ensure that the investments are made wisely and managed well."
But once again, Obama was short of specifics on who's going to do that and how.
The answer is that Congress will be passing out money based on requests from states and cities, requests that will include plenty of earmarks, no matter what Obama says now.
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I am shocked, shocked I tell you!
OMG, OMG, the Messiah is backing a bill with PORK in it??!!! AYSM???
What is the world coming to PORK, OMG, PORK!!
Gasp, it will take some time to recover from this shock.
Can Obama ban earmarks?
The story I'm waiting to see is the media actually pointing out that Obama has no authority to "ban" earmarks from this bill or any bill. My eighth grade civic class taught me that the president can suggest legislation, but that congress writes and passes it. They put earmarks in the various bills because, surprise, THEY CAN.
The president has the power to veto any legislation he/she doesn't approve of, but he has no authority to tell congress what bills they can or can't pass and sent for presidential approval. I don't believe there is any way Obama or anyone in his administration can "ban" congress from doing anything. It's called checks and balances, each branch of government has certain powers. If Palin would have come out and said she was going to ban congress from doing anything, the media would have jumped all over her lack of basic knowledge of how the goverment functions.
Amazing
Yael, are you suggesting the congress is not going to roll over and do whatever the newly elected president wants, amazing. Of course congress is going to load up the pork, this stimulus is a congressmans dream come true, dole out trillions of dollars then go home and tell the people how much money he brought home from DC.
If you really wanted to stimulate the economy, cut the budget, cut taxes, especially business and corporate taxes, cut the capital gains taxes, and realize that more government spending may solve a short term problem but years of trillion dollar deficits will do more harm than anything the former Soviet Union or AQ would ever be able to do.
Someone needs to stand up and clearly articulate the limits of government at all levels.