Earmarks in Form, if Not Process, Are an Issue for McCain
By MICHAEL COOPER
New York Times
The campaign trail has recently taken Senator John McCain — the scourge of earmarked, pork-barrel spending in Congress — across the Alabama River on the Gee’s Bend ferry, to one of his old Navy posts at Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Fla., and to the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa., where he marveled at the new technology.
Each one of these campaign stops visited a place that received some money from — you guessed it — Congressional earmarks, as Democrats have gleefully pointed out.
Mr. McCain, who has vowed to veto all earmarks as president and to “make the authors famous,” said this week that he understood that some earmarked projects were worthwhile and deserved money. It is the unaccountable, opaque way in which such spending is quietly slipped into legislation that he objects to, a system he said bred corruption. Good programs, he said, can still be paid for the traditional way.
“If they’re worthy programs, then they can be authorized and appropriated in a New York minute,” Mr. McCain said aboard his campaign bus as he left the hospital in Allentown, which Democrats pointed out received earmarks for construction and a program to treat ovarian cancer.
“If they are worthy projects, I know that they will be funded,” he said. “I know that this program here would be funded.”
(Continued here.)
New York Times
The campaign trail has recently taken Senator John McCain — the scourge of earmarked, pork-barrel spending in Congress — across the Alabama River on the Gee’s Bend ferry, to one of his old Navy posts at Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Fla., and to the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa., where he marveled at the new technology.
Each one of these campaign stops visited a place that received some money from — you guessed it — Congressional earmarks, as Democrats have gleefully pointed out.
Mr. McCain, who has vowed to veto all earmarks as president and to “make the authors famous,” said this week that he understood that some earmarked projects were worthwhile and deserved money. It is the unaccountable, opaque way in which such spending is quietly slipped into legislation that he objects to, a system he said bred corruption. Good programs, he said, can still be paid for the traditional way.
“If they’re worthy programs, then they can be authorized and appropriated in a New York minute,” Mr. McCain said aboard his campaign bus as he left the hospital in Allentown, which Democrats pointed out received earmarks for construction and a program to treat ovarian cancer.
“If they are worthy projects, I know that they will be funded,” he said. “I know that this program here would be funded.”
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home