Monday, 28 January 2008

In Passing

No guts, no glory


The Wall Street Journal:

...Tonight... President Bush uses his State of the Union address to lay down his toughest anti-earmarking pledge to date. We're told he will tell Congress that he will veto any fiscal 2009 spending bill that doesn't cut earmarks in half from 2008 levels. He will also report that he is issuing a Presidential order informing executive departments that from now on they should refuse to fund earmarks that aren't explicitly mentioned in statutory language.
Of course...
Mr. Bush's executive order will not apply to the fiscal 2008 spending bills that passed late last year. Congress endorsed 11,735 special-interest earmarks worth $16.9 billion in fiscal 2008, yet thousands of these weren't even written into the actual budget bills.
No real action, but a bunch of promises. This is supposed to be progress?

Forget the Journal's "12-step" program. Cold turkey works quicker, and in my experience the folks who get through it don't backslide.

UPDATE 080128 20:29: Bush issues the order, and Glenn says:
If he'd done this in 2005, of course, the GOP might have kept its majority.
Yep. And we wouldn't have $16.9 billion worth of earmarks today.



Via: Daily Pundit

Previously:

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