Pictured above, Obama's budget advisor.
By Matt Lewis Mar 11th 2009 1:41PM
When Barack Obama told us change was coming, most Americans probably expected some form of bold, new approach to government. In short, many were expecting a new brand of politician who would stand up to the fat-cats in Washington.
Instead, Obama is poised to usher in a new era of wasteful spending and government largess. The man who told us he would go through the budget "line by line" is instead signing a budget he calls "imperfect" because it comes with thousands upon thousands of porky little earmarks -- in the middle of a recession, nonetheless.
Apparently he's going to be proposing some new rules for the earmarking process to avoid getting embarrassed like this again -- but I'm not convinced these new restrictions will have enough teeth to make a difference.
After all, he has certainly been less than zealous in fighting pork in the current budget. From what I'm hearing, the biggest proposal for "change" will be a requirement that congressmen submit their earmarks to executive agencies for review. There may also be plans for a "rescission" process by which the president could go back and suggest cuts to Congress after he signs a spending bill -- but Congress would have little incentive accept those proposed cuts.
So, in the future it might become slightly more difficult to get an earmark inserted into a bill, but I don't see how such modest restrictions will really do anything to stop the current feeding frenzy. More likely, they will give President Obama the ability to say he's doing something about pork-barrel spending while he continues to sign spending bill after earmark-laden spending bill.
We asked for a new kind of government last year, but instead we got a President whose actions tell us the entrenched culture of Washington is simply "too big to fail". We heard that line from Geithner, we got it again on the stimulus package, and now we're hearing it in regards to a spending bill so bloated that it could be considered a national tragedy. This isn't a new era, it's just more of the same old waste.
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/03/11/obamas-pork-paradox/
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