NY Times Excerpt:
Representative Sean Duffy, Republican of Wisconsin, who devoted part of his 2010 campaign to criticizing the penchant of his predecessor, David R. Obey — a Democrat who retired after four decades in Congress — for securing earmarks, said he traveled to his district last week to gently explain to local governments that times had changed. “I am being honest with people,” Mr. Duffy said in a telephone interview. “I draw them a pie chart.”
I wonder if his earmark pie chart has any resemblance to mine.
Across the country, local governments, nonprofit groups and scores of farmers, to name but a few, are waking up to the fact that when Congress stamped out earmarks last week, it was talking about their projects, too.
After Giffords, Veiled Threats Of Gun Violence Still Identify Tea Party Conservatives
Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch told tea party activists Tuesday that they have to "get armed" to make sure that Congress tackles the country's debt.
Politico Excerpt:
The soft spoken Hatch usually uses more moderate language when explaining his positions on national debt. Recently, though, the newest member of the Senate Tea Party Caucus has been contacting Utah Tea Party organizations to prove his conservative credentials in an effort to avoid the fate of his former colleague, Bob Bennett, who lost his seat to conservative Sen. Mike Lee in a primary last year.
2 comments:
I live in Duffy country and can tell you that the people here don't understand this issue any more than Duffy does. If it's an earmark it must be bad. Now they will be trying to find a way to pay for a $1 million+ communication tower system they've put off for far too long. They've already forgotten that it was Obey who got them the earmark money to cover this project. With earmarks cancelled and with Zero county budgets for the past two cycles, this conservative county with 17% poverty will soon discover the importance of earmarks when property taxes rise to cover the mandated project. I wonder who'll they'll blame. It won't be Duffy.
The idea that banning earmarks will somehow lead the way to balanced national budgets is so absurd, but yet many republicans ran on that point and won. Obey took care of his district by putting more hard earned dollars back into taxpayers pockets with earmarks - but democrats never frame it that way. Instead, Fox News and the RNC will repeatedly claim our national debt was created by wasteful pork and earmarks written by socialist spenders like Obey.
Democrats have no marketing or messaging. The truth can't compete any more.
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