There’s a very old (not very funny) joke which goes “How do you know when a politician is lying?” “His lips are moving!”. Like I said not very funny, but unfortunately very true. Some lies are insignificant to the American people (”I did not have sexual relations with that woman”), others affect us greatly (”Read my lips America, No new taxes”). The fact remains it is not a partisan issue where Republicans can label Democrats as liars, or vice versa, both parties are equally guilty.

After the 2006 election the common belief among Americans was the Republicans lost control of Congress because of the war. Many people felt that because a small majority of the American people wanted to end the war in Iraq they chose to vote for a Democrat, knowing a Republican would continue to fight. This is a false assumption in my opinion. Personally, I believe the Republicans lost control of Congress because they lost the trust of their constituents. Over the 12 years the Republicans were in control they quickly changed fiscal policies, increasing the national budget exponentially while encountering numerous scandals along the way.

Nancy Pelosi promised to change all of that, she offered to end the culture of corruption and bring transparency back into Congress. In short, she told the American people what they wanted to hear, and as a reward, those people made her the most powerful woman in the history of Congress.

Less than 6 months later, Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats are under attack from Citizens Against Government Waste for breaking their promise to publicize congressional earmarks, otherwise known as pork. “David Williams, vice president of policy at CAGW, said Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin pledged in January to make the requested earmarks public during floor debate on their respective spending bills. Obey’s subsequent decision to reveal the pork projects in August, after the appropriations bills have already been voted on, represents a broken promise, Williams said.”

Ironically, last year in a last ditch effort by the Republican controlled House to prove to voters they can be trusted, drafted a rule to require that earmark requests and their sponsors be publicized during a bill’s drafting and debate. The Democrats have since struck that rule, allowing Congressman to present their earmarks during conferences between House and Senate appropriators. This is significant because the conferences are closed to the press, and the conference reports are not amendable on the floor of the House or Senate.

Republicans have tried to challenge this process, demanding the Democrats fulfill their promise to the American people. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said Monday “If they think they can demagogue the earmarks process all the year long and expect Democrats to carry the burden of passing earmarks, they’re wrong. … There will be no earmarks for anybody,” Obey said.

Considering there were over 32,000 earmark requests this year, we can only hope Republicans will continue to ‘demagogue’ the earmark process, and Obey kills them all!

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Congress, Politics, Taxes