Republicans For Pork?

Senators vote to ban earmarks -- then grab them
WASHINGTON—More than two dozen senators, most Republicans, who recently voted to ban homestate projects are claiming hundreds of Earmarks in an almost $1.3 Trillion bill to fund most federal programs and agencies into next fall. Republicans are calling the 1,924-page bill a pork-filled mess and accusing Democrats of trying to jam it through Congress with minimal debate and little if any opportunity to make changes. Some GOP senators voiced outrage but made no effort to dump their own earm...

DeMint Calls On Republicans To Force Fall Spending Showdown With Democrats
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is sending out a warning to his fellow Republicans: Stand tall against Government Spending this fall, and be prepared for a showdown. "[B]efore they're replaced in January, all of the Democrats who are put out of a job in November will be able to come back and rob the nation blind," DeMint writes in the conservative National Review. At a glance it appears DeMint is lashing out at Democrats. But his real concern is that members of his own party -- who he described last w...

Senators Vote to Ban Earmarks - Then Grab Them
Thursday, December 16, 2010 By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Washington (AP) - Twenty-five senators, most Republicans, who recently voted to ban homestate projects are claiming hundreds of Earmarks in an almost $1.3 Trillion bill to fund most federal programs and agencies until next year. Republicans are calling the 1,924-page bill a pork-filled mess and accusing Democrats of trying to jam it through Congress with minimal debate and little if any opportunity to make changes. Some GOP sena...

Lame Duck Lawmakers Line Up for Pork
By Danny Yadron A Bipartisan group of 13 senators who will be leaving Congress next month have their names on about $1.4 billion of the $8.3 billion in earmark funds in the Senate Democratic leadership’s $1.1 Trillion omnibus spending proposal. The 13 occupy a special place in the debate roiling the Democratic spending plan. Either because they retired or were defeated, they won’t be coming back. The omnibus represents the last chance they have to bring home the bucks to their constituents. An..

Coburn's 'Wiki-earmarks' service highlights omnibus pork
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, has performed a public service by compiling and posting on his official web site a Spreadsheet containing information and data about all of the more than 6,600 Earmarks requested by Democrats and Republicans for the $1.2 Trillion Omnibus Spending bill. That's the massive last-minute banzai bill concocted by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-HI, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made sure the 111th Congress fa...

Senators vote to ban earmarks _ then grab them
WASHINGTON — Twenty-five senators, most Republicans, who recently voted to ban homestate projects are claiming hundreds of Earmarks in an almost $1.3 Trillion bill to fund most federal programs and agencies until next year. Republicans are calling the 1,924-page bill a pork-filled mess and accusing Democrats of trying to jam it through Congress with minimal debate and little if any opportunity to make changes. Some GOP senators voiced outrage but made no effort to dump their own earmarks...

Senators vote to ban earmarks _ then grab them
Twenty-five senators, most Republicans, who recently voted to ban homestate projects are claiming hundreds of Earmarks in an almost $1.3 Trillion bill to fund most federal programs and agencies until next year. Republicans are calling the 1,924-page bill a pork-filled mess and accusing Democrats of trying to jam it through Congress with minimal debate and little if any opportunity to make changes. Some GOP senators voiced outrage but made no effort to dump their own Earmarks from the Legislation...

Senators vote to ban earmarks _ then grab them
WASHINGTON (AP) — Twenty-five senators, most Republicans, who recently voted to ban homestate projects are claiming hundreds of earmarks in an almost $1.3 trillion bill to fund most federal programs and agencies until next year. Republicans are calling the 1,924-page bill a pork-filled mess and accusing Democrats of trying to jam it through Congress with minimal debate and little if any opportunity to make changes. Some GOP senators voiced outrage but made no effort to dump their own earma...

Christmas Comes Early RINO Murkowski Pays Back Indian Supporters Ten-Fold!
Multiple Alaska Native groups combined to form a PAC that spent $1.7 million to assist Senator Lisa Murkowski in her bid for Reelection last month. Now we find out that in Earmarks alone in the pending omnibus bill Senator Murkowski has paid her supporters back over  to 10 to 1 . Several of these Earmarks were dedicated to native corporations, villages and councils. Pretty good Return on Investiment (ROI), huh? It is unknown how many of the DOD Earmarks will end up in those same native corp...

Who will get away with the Omnibus snow job?
Times are most interesting in DC, while the North of the country is cold but dry, while DC is covered in snow. The snow is in the buildings of the legislative branch as much as it outside. You see we have the unbridled farce of Republicans who eagerly put Earmarks into the Omnibus bill to be voted on, saying they will vote against it. Or at least some of them are doing so. Others seem tone deaf and carrying on as if Nov. 2010 was just like any other election. There is a subtle sorting process go...

Reid defends earmarks, threatens work until Jan. 5
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate mics Thursday afternoon to defend the practice of Earmarks, saying it was Congress's Constitutional Right to spend money and vowing to fight for that right against both Republicans and the Executive Branch. "I am convinced that I don't want to give up more power to White House - whether it's George Bush or Barack Obama," Reid said. "And I'm going to fight as hard as I can against President Obama on these earmarks; and my Republican colleagues ...

Negotiating 101
On November 29, all 42 Republican senators signed a letter to Harry Reid that said this: we write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke Cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the Tax Increase that is currently awaiting all American Taxpayers. With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that...

Report: Sen. Harry Reid Abandons Effort To Pass Spending Bill; Extend Current Funding
At a time when Senator Harry Reid is desperate for a legislative victory, it appears that he’s chalked up another loss. On a day of bi-partisan blaming over Earmarks included in a $1.1 Trillion dollar spending bill with nary any time for legislators to review, it appears that the Democratic Senate leader is withdrawing effort to pass the massive spending bill, instead choosing to extend the current funding. Reuters reports: In a surprise victory for Republicans, Senate Democratic Leader Ha...

Vote Shows New START Has Enough Support For Ratification
Ratification of the New START Treaty received a huge boost today as it received two-thirds support of the voting Senate on the motion to proceed to debate. While only 51 votes were needed to begin debate, this vote demonstrates that Republicans are divided on the treaty and that it has enough support to achieve ratification. The super majority vote also serves as a significant blow to Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) who was forced to back down from making the Senate clerk read the text of treaty. N...

Democrats' budget bill: $1.1 trillion; 1,900 pages - David Rogers
Defying the political odds, Senate Democrats rolled out a year-end, governmentwide spending bill Tuesday that cuts more than $26 billion from President Barack Obama’s 2011 requests even as it holds firm to thousands of the appropriations Earmarks so adamantly opposed by critics of Congress. Filling more than 1,900 pages, the $1.1 Trillion measure represents an increase of less than 2 percent in annual spending but makes for an easy target of ridicule — a last stand by the Senate&r...;

Senate GOP likely to force confrontation of FCC net neutrality rules
Thirty senators have signed a letter making it clear that should the Federal Communications Commission implement "Net Neutrality" regulations during its December 21st meeting, the GOP will force a confrontation on the Senate floor over the rules. Doing so would provide insight into how Republicans, as a minority in the Senate, leverage its control over the House of Representatives to hamstring attempts by the Executive Branch to rule by regulatory fiat. You and the Commission's General Counsel h...

Is Congress going to do it all over again?
Right now in Washington there is a bill that's being put up for a weekend vote that essentially ignores what the entire country said back in November. It's a behemoth $1.1 Trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that has everybody in Congress going for the spending trough. Did they not see the results from the election?  Sen. Tom Coburn has a list that will show you what our Congress is up to these days while they think no one is paying attention. Well, someone is paying attention.  Thes...

New START Daily Wrap: Day 1
Key procedural vote on New START passes strongly.  The final Vote Count was 66-32, which represents a two-thirds majority of the 98 senators who were present-enough to ratify the agreement, and far more than the 51 votes that were required to begin debate.  Nine Republican senators -- John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Robert Bennett, Lisa Murkowski, Scott Brown, George Voinovich, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Richard Lugar - all voted to bring New START to the Senate floor. Delay tactics...

DADT and New START
Republican senators Olympia Snowe, Lisa Murkowski, and Scott Brown will join Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in voting for the standalone bill to Repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. I think that adds up to 61 votes in favor of Repeal and that constitutes a slim but decisive majority in the 100-member Senate. It looks like the Obama Administration is going to get this done and people are going to have to give Joe Lieberman a ton of the credit for it. Lieberman has been essential to the effort and...

Judges, ideology and partisanship
I'm hoping for the moment when a Federal Judge picked by a Democratic president strikes down the health-care law. Or when a Republican-appointed judge upholds it. Either way. Because the current lineup of decisions, in which two Democratic-nominated judges have ruled in favor of the law, one Republican against, is not healthy for the judiciary or the democratic process. It is facile to think of judges as umpires robotically calling balls and strikes. But it is also dangerous to think of judges ...

AM Alert: Exchanges
Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez is in Washington, D.C., for a second day of meetings on implementing the federal Health Care reform Legislation in California. Pérez authored Assembly Bill 1602, one of two bills signed into law to create a state-run Health Insurance exchange set to be up and running by 2014. The Legislation made California the first state to lay the groundwork for such a system for Uninsured individuals to purchase health benefits as required under the federal hea...

That Other Individual Mandate Lawsuit
In Pensacola, Fla. today, Federal Judge Roger Vinson indicated he sympathizes with those who say the Affordable Care Act's Individual Mandate violates the Constitution. If Vinson ultimately rules that the requirement that all Americans maintain health Insurance Coverage is Unconstitutional, it would be a second brutal court blow to the Obama Administration. Earlier this week, a federal judge in Virginia ruled the Federal Government does not have the power to impose the individual mandate. Two o...

Whats the Story With the Repeal Amendment?
Download audio here Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Virginia Speaker of the House William J. Howell, to discuss the landmark win against ObamaCare earlier this week, how states can band together on the issue, and his proposal for a Repeal Amendment to empower states. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can...

Cuccinelli Takes Health Care Suit Victory Lap (VIDEO)
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli claimed victory against the Federal Government in the wake of a Federal Judge's ruling that the Individual Mandate in the Health Care reform law signed by President Barack Obama earlier this year is Unconstitutional. "We won the first round in this particular fight, but we know there are others to come," Cuccinelli told reporters in a news conference Monday afternoon. "Certainly this was a peaceful attempt for noble purposes to abridge the rights of the...

The individual mandate is unconstitutional (Sen. Orrin Hatch)
Judge Henry Hudson’s ruling striking down ObamaCare’s individual Insurance mandate shows what a year and a few constitutional principles can accomplish. A year ago, liberal politicians and pundits scoffed at the mere suggestion that there was anything the Federal Government could not do. Today, Judge Hudson is only the first Federal Judge to say that, yes, the Constitution sets real limits on Congress. Liberty requires limits on government, limits that government itself does not control. C...