TEA PARTY Pressuring Senate Republicans to BAN EARMARKS

[Segami]

:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:



" Tea Party Patriots (TPP), a national umbrella organization of local Tea Party groups, is asking its members to call Republican senators and demand that they agree in a caucus vote next Tuesday to forgo all earmarks in the upcoming Congress.


In an e-mail to their 134,000 online members headlined, "Our first battle with the newly empowered GOP," the group's national coordinators single out for phone calls the two highest-ranking Republicans in the Senate, among others.


The earmark ban is being introduced in the House of Representatives by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who is widely admired in the Tea Party movement. The ban will presumably pass the House caucus, since it is being introduced by the leadership. In the Senate, the leadership is split, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) opposed to the measure. As Politico reported on Tuesday, McConnell is meeting one on one with Republican senators and urging them to vote against the amendment.


DeMint has 10 cosponsors, including incoming Tea Party favorites Marco Rubio (Fla.), Mike Lee (Utah), and Rand Paul (Ky.). The two cosponsors in the Senate Republican leadership are John Cornyn (Texas), who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 2010 election cycle, and Policy Committee Chairman John Ensign (Nev.).


McConnell and his veteran allies, such as Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), are reluctant to give up the perquisites of their seniority and the hundreds of millions of dollars they annually send to their home states for pet projects.

The Tea Party Patriots' call to action asks members to call their home-state senator if he or she is a Republican who has not committed to supporting DeMint's amendment. In addition to McConnell and Inhofe, it lists five other senators to call, of whom three are in the Republican Senate leadership: Minority Whip John Kyl (Ariz.), GOP Conference Chair Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), and Conference Vice Chair John Thune (S.D.). The other two senators on the hit list are Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John Barrasso (Wy.).


cont'

<http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/11/11/tea-party-pressuring-senate-republicans-to-ban-earmarks.html>

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[muntrv]

1. TPP, get out there and teabag Inhoffe and Mitch!

[Segami]

3. They should start watching their backs these days. They decided to lay down with these Tea Baggers

in this election, now they'll face their coming repercussions.

[Scuba]

2. This will only hasten their demise. n/t

[MadMaddie]

4. bwa..ha..haw...

earmarks to Repugs are like drugs and they are not going cold turkey.

:popcorn: :rofl:

[Segami]

5. This could get very interesting shortly if BOTH sides decide to bunker down on their positions. If

Rand Paul and other Tea Baggers don't pursue the earmark issue, they'll begin breaking one of their own campaign promises.

[Bigmack]

6. Earmarks don't mean shit!..

It's the two wars, the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and the Medicare scrip program.

"These earmarks and "pork" projects are bankrupting America."  You hear that a lot.  Not true, though.  
This year Congress spent $16.5 billion on 9,129 projects around the country, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. Which is also less than one-half of 1 percent of all federal spending.
In fact, if you could retroactively undo every single pork-barrel project Congress has passed during the past 20 years — all 110,000 of them — you would have enough money to buy down the $13.7 trillion national debt by ... 2 percent.   
http://www.cagw.org/

The two wars, the Bush tax cuts and the Medicare prescription-drug program the Republicans pushed through in 2003.  The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, and pushed the Medicare drug bill through by ending a filibuster by the Democrats. Just the drug program, which was never accounted for in the budget until 2009, is adding more to the deficit than the bank bailout, the stimulus and the new health-care law combined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug,_Improvement,_and_Modernization_Act

[Tatiana]

7. Finally, the teanuts are showing they're good for something.

I hope they get a ban on earmarks passed; Obama has indicated he may sign such a bill.

Then let the damn idiots wonder why their states and roads and local constituent services have disappeared or gone to shit.

Maybe then they will learn that the federal government is not always the problem, but actually provides more than a few solutions to problems... even in so-called red states like Wyoming and South Carolina and Arizona.

[Odin2005]

8. LOL, this will be fun!

[jberryhill]

9. Earmarks are an inevitable consequence of headstomping /nt

[ellie]

10. Good luck with that!

[DontTreadOnMe]

11. End the earmarks...

and then also change the amount of Fed dollars issued back to the states. No more donor states.
Let California and New York get back 1/1 ratio.

The donor states are all blue... let the red states eat what they have sewn.

No more bridges to nowhere.