By LISA LERER & CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN | 1/26/09 8:57 PM EST - Politico.com
As Barack Obama meets with Republicans Tuesday, some in the GOP have enlisted an unlikely ally to derail his $825 billion stimulus plan – Barack Obama.
They’re using Obama’s pledge to keep earmarks out of the massive bill to criticize Democrats in Congress – saying projects like family-planning funding and arts spending in the House version are exactly the kind of pork-barrel spending Obama promised he’d fight.
“Many conservatives are just getting upset that Barack Obama comes into office talking about change and his first big initiative is a massive $800 billion dollar pork barrel project,” said Brian Darling, director of U.S. Senate Relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “If he wants to cut wasteful spending the first the thing he should do is veto his own stimulus bill.”
At issue is a list of programs that Republicans say will do little to stimulate economic recovery, including $21 million to sod the National Mall, $50 million to fund the National Endowment of the Arts and $650 million for digital TV coupons. Republicans also have seized on millions that would be spent under the bill to expand family-planning services in the states.
The projects are a fraction of the massive spending bill – and Democrats dispute that they’re pork. But the items have given Republicans a hook to rally opposition to the bill, on conservative talk-radio and elsewhere.
And they’ve put Obama in an uncomfortable spot. He swept into Washington promising to find a new way of doing business in the Capitol, one that would be more focused on bipartisan compromise and less on wasteful special interest earmarks.
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Now the bullshit is starting to draw flies. First putting someone in Treasury who doesn't pay his taxes, next clearly breaking your pledge against lobbyist working in your administration, but now, one of the few things which gained you votes among the GOP, cutting pork spend. Are you going to stand up for what you ran on or will you crumble like everyone else? Stand up to Pelosi now or she is going to make you her bitch for the next 4 years.
As Barack Obama meets with Republicans Tuesday, some in the GOP have enlisted an unlikely ally to derail his $825 billion stimulus plan – Barack Obama.They’re using Obama’s pledge to keep earmarks out of the massive bill to criticize Democrats in Congress – saying projects like family-planning funding and arts spending in the House version are exactly the kind of pork-barrel spending Obama promised he’d fight.
“Many conservatives are just getting upset that Barack Obama comes into office talking about change and his first big initiative is a massive $800 billion dollar pork barrel project,” said Brian Darling, director of U.S. Senate Relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “If he wants to cut wasteful spending the first the thing he should do is veto his own stimulus bill.”
At issue is a list of programs that Republicans say will do little to stimulate economic recovery, including $21 million to sod the National Mall, $50 million to fund the National Endowment of the Arts and $650 million for digital TV coupons. Republicans also have seized on millions that would be spent under the bill to expand family-planning services in the states.
The projects are a fraction of the massive spending bill – and Democrats dispute that they’re pork. But the items have given Republicans a hook to rally opposition to the bill, on conservative talk-radio and elsewhere.
And they’ve put Obama in an uncomfortable spot. He swept into Washington promising to find a new way of doing business in the Capitol, one that would be more focused on bipartisan compromise and less on wasteful special interest earmarks.
(more...)
----
Now the bullshit is starting to draw flies. First putting someone in Treasury who doesn't pay his taxes, next clearly breaking your pledge against lobbyist working in your administration, but now, one of the few things which gained you votes among the GOP, cutting pork spend. Are you going to stand up for what you ran on or will you crumble like everyone else? Stand up to Pelosi now or she is going to make you her bitch for the next 4 years.
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