The Heritage Foundation
has issued a new report that charges the Obama administration sent
presidential earmarks, taxpayer dollars, to Democratic lawmakers to help
convince them to vote for controversial proposals such as cap and trade
and the health care bill.
"When you examine the recipients of those
grants, there were at least 32 vulnerable house Democrats who received
significant federal grant money during the run-up or directly after the
votes on those pieces of legislation," says Lachlan Markay, one of the
authors of the report.
The amount of earmarks spiked around the
time of difficult votes such as cap and trade, then dropped, only to
spike again around controversial financial regulations known as
Dodd/Frank, and spiked the most just before the vote on the health care bill.
Cap and trade was tough for many Democrats,
especially in the Midwest, because even the president acknowledged it
would, as he put it, cause energy prices to "skyrocket."
The health care law remains controversial even today, with many polls showing majority of Americans oppose to it.
On their websites, lawmakers didn't
advertise their votes, but did tout at length the money they'd gotten
for various local projects.
"As a way to counteract the negative voter
sentiment that would come from voting for unpopular legislation," says
Markay. "These were attempts to make sure that constituents knew they
were bringing money home to their district."
Nevertheless, the White House argued today nothing was amiss.
"The president's opposition to earmarks is
well known. The fact of the matter is I'm confident the issuance of
grants from agencies are done ... in a merit based way," White House
spokesman Jay Carney said.
President Obama didn't invent the practice. FDR used it to great effect and President Nixon is reported to have used earmarks to help win support for re-election by sending funds to key states or voting blocs.
But President Obama has vastly expanded the practice.
Numbers from the non-partisan Congressional
Research Service show that the value of administration earmarks under
President Obama increased by a 126 percent in his first two years in
office and the actual number of administrative earmarks increased by 54
percent.
Those are dramatic increases that are 11
times more than Congress itself increased earmarks, which the White
House did not explain today.
It also does not square with statements the
president is against earmarks, which he and his administration appear to
have used to great effect and with increasing frequency.
No comments:
Post a Comment