News came in yesterday that Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint had successfully negotiated a clean continuing resolution for the remaining appropriations bills in the Senate. There were talks with GOP Leadership and the big-spending appropriators to attach a clean Military Quality approps bill to the CR, but the appropriators balked, refusing to let a couple of freshman senators push them around. In the end, ironically and deliciously, a couple of freshman senators pushed them around.
What does this all mean? This article ($) from Roll Call gives a good explanation:
Despite professing their general support for passing a new veterans spending bill, conservatives hailed the decision to pass only a CR until February by noting how many earmarks they prevented from becoming law.“Senate conservatives have effectively blocked over 10,000 earmarks and are ready to work with Democrats (or hold them accountable when necessary) to continue this progress next year,” DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton wrote in an e-mail.
Denton added that Congress passed 12,852 earmarks in the fiscal 2006 spending bills and that by preventing “an earmark-laden omnibus bill, Senate conservatives have effectively cut the number by 80 percent, down to 2,600 earmarks, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.”
Breathe that last comment in for a second. Because of the courageous work of a few senators, led by Coburn and DeMint, taxpayers will save billions. And, from all indications, the fireworks will continue. Armed with a bagful of wrenches, you can expect Coburn and DeMint to shut down the liberals’ big-government machine if (or more likely when) it starts up next year in the 110th Congress.
In the past Rob’s wondered if concentrating too much on pork would make the voters think that we don’t need to worry about entitlements. That is by eliminating the easy spending, pork, you overlook where the huge problem lies which is out of control entitlement spending. I disagree. I think that we need to create momentum in budget matters to create the environment where we can talk about entitlement reform.