http://www.usnews.com/blogs/news-desk/2008/01/29/democrats-rap-bush-on-earmarks.html

THANK YOU plus rep for BUSH!!!

Sorry this has been a big wish for me for years...

Now to watch the fireworks...

Wow gee

wru 5 years ago Mr. Boosh.

They'll test him once or twice with a bill or two laden with GoP earmarks for Republican pols in battleground states states and Georgy will suffer amnesia.

If he had balls on this issue, we'd have seen em already

Bullshit, this should've been in place 20 plus years ago. Let's not lay this soley at Bush's feet.

So that means every president before him lacked chutzpah as well right?

Reading you droll out Bush slang is like watching American Idol season premiers. Try again next season.

Seriously, Fandros, do you think he'd veto any pork-ridden bill if the Repubs were still in charge?

Errr Thor, seriously he didn't say he was going to line item veto. He Exec Ordered the earmarks ability to be funded. I don't see a line item type request there, was a flat out order.

Im glad to see he finally did this. but if he had done it 3 years ago things would of really gotten politically stagnant the last 3 years from all the heated debates and filabusters ect.


Its great to be a last term president in your last year things actually get accomplished better late than never.

Errr Thor, seriously he didn't say he was going to line item veto. He Exec Ordered the earmarks ability to be funded. I don't see a line item type request there, was a flat out order.Of course he's not going to line item veto. He can't line item veto. Bush said he'd veto any pork laden bill that Congress tossed his way, exactly what he didn't do when his party ruled Congress. So the question stands and is pertinent: do you really think he'd threaten a veto if the Repubs still held Congress?

A) It was an Exec Order to all agencies telling them to deny funding to any earmarks.

B) This removes him from personal choice, they are refused monies.....


This is what I've been asking for for years, it's a great first step.

So that means every president before him lacked chutzpah as well right?

yes

I'm still curious how a president can spend my money without getting a bill signed of some sort...

A) It was an Exec Order to all agencies telling them to deny funding to any earmarks.I suspect this is unconstitutional for the same reason line item veto is.

Reading around a bit and came upon this (http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/29/bush):
By making the veto threat and the executive order prospective rather than retrospective, Bush quite possibly ensured that those actions will have little effect. “Politically, it’s meaningful, because he can go out saying he was fiscally responsible,” said Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “But by making it just for 2009, this is meaningless, because Congress, forewarned, could do whatever it wants to get around [the executive order].... If you were really serious about ending earmarks, then it is a missed opportunity. He could have cut them out now instead of prospectively.”
Critics of the practice of earmarking said they were disappointed by the president’s action. Citizens Against Government Waste, which publishes an annual “pig book” documenting the extent of earmarked spending, noted that “the executive order could easily be skirted by appropriators during the next budget cycle, who can simply insert a line to give the earmarks contained in the accompanying reports the force of law but which still puts them off limits to budget cutters who would attempt to strip them from the bills during the floor debate.”

I don't see how it can be so Thor, and I hope it's not.

This earmark bs that is sometimes added AFTER a vote has to stop. Perhaps if nothing else comes of this it'll bring all this garbage to light and we can railroad it out of the system.