DCRepublican.com

Wed 14 May 2008

It seems like $300,000,000,000 is the magic number these days in Washington.

First Congress wanted to allocate $300billion for a mortgage bailout, and now they want allocate another $300billion of YOUR money to subsidizing farmers and a variety of other state pet-projects.

Even though President Bush had promised a veto on this legislation, the House continued to charge ahead at full speed, passing the Farm Bill and all the pork attached.

From CNN.com:

“This bill has been under consideration for a long, long time, and yet still we have earmarks that have been ‘air dropped’ into the legislation,” said Arizona GOP Rep. Jeff Flake.

So what exactly is included in this package? Here is just a taste:

The bill also contains a few home-state projects, including tax breaks for Kentucky racehorse owners, extra help for farmers in Hawaii and Alaska and dollars for salmon fishermen in the Pacific Northwest.

Sadly, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

In the coming days, I’ll try to get a more complete list of some of the additional pet-projects that are included in this enormous package, as well as who requested them.

Unfortunately, the vote in the House was 318-106, which means that there is already enough likely-’yays’ for a veto override. However, if 28 of the 100 Republicans who voted for the Farm Bill would grow a pair and focus on principle, and not the outcome in November, then maybe people would start to see the Republican Party as one that is actually unified behind a set of core values.

Welcome to campaign 2008.