There's no doubt about it, earmarks are not very popular. There are good earmarks and bad earmarks. The good earmarks are the ones I get for my district.
Quotes about earmarks (16 Quotes)
In the world of commercial speech, tobacco advertising bears the earmarks of an endangered species.
After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.
There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.
Transparency, sunshine, disclosure are recurring themes in the conversations that I am having with my colleagues. I think people are in general agreement that names ought to be associated with earmarks that are funded.
Look, we know we screwed up when we were in the majority. We fell in love with power. We spent way too much money - especially on earmarks. There was too much corruption when we ran this place. We were guilty. And that's why we lost.
They want to keep the ability to hide earmarks. They don't want the scrutiny.
The earmark favor factory needs to be boarded up and demolished, not turned over to new management that may or may not have a better eye for earmarks with 'merit.'
We know that appropriators will fight these cutbacks. But by eliminating earmarks, we can stop the horse trading that grows agency budgets.
It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except the intended target!
We have a clear example here that earmarks caused harm. Because we siphoned off funds to go to parochial projects, we have put people in harm's way and exposed them to greater risk. Congress needs to put its house in order and target their funding to where there's the greatest need,
I think we ought to ban earmarks. I think we ought to give citizens the opportunity to designate up to 10 percent of their federal income tax toward debt reduction. If we did that, we would reduce our debt by $95 billion a year.
Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington.
During my first term in Congress, I signed a pledge that I will take no more earmarks and I've been faithful to that pledge.
In Both Parties Find Trough to Their Liking , ... Federal pork spending has exploded in recent years. The highway bill passed in July was bloated with 6,371 pork projects, or earmarks, inserted by members of Congress. Overall, the number of pork projects has increased ten-fold during the past decade. ... The pork explosion is a neon sign advertising the fiscal failure of today's congressional leadership.
I am convinced that I do not want to give up more power to the White House, whether it's George Bush or Barack Obama. And I'm going to fight as hard as I can against President Obama on these earmarks and my Republican colleagues who hate to vote for them, but love to get them.