Congressional Earmarks: Embracing and Ignoring a Message From Voters

[Geee]

American Thinker:


When legislators seeking to secure their reelections personally deliver big cardboard checks with their own names on the payer's line, when they summon local media to announce awards and smile into cameras on presentation, we are reminded of the smallness of their objectives.

It's never about voters, their states, or their districts. It's always about the congressman or senator. Those checks are meant to preserve members' prosperity. They have nothing to do with ours.

It's no stretch to imagine congressional earmark advocates running for Santa Claus as much as for office. Who doesn't like Santa? And who craves approval more than politicians?

Members want people to vote for them based on what voters were "given," but people have begun to understand that if Washington politicians are allowed to decide how taxpayer money will be spent and on what, especially at home, then voters allow government to intrude further into their lives and take away more of their choices.

Earmarks pick America's pockets a penny at a time. Every time an earmark is attached to a spending bill, every taxpayer's pocket is picked -- a penny here, a nickel there, twenty-five cents another time. How many petty thefts should taxpayers tolerate?