(33 quotes found)
“It's easy to practice checkbook compassion.”
Brian Riedl
“It's symbolic progress for Congress to learn that they can terminate programs without the sky falling. Maybe they can come back next year and start terminating programs whose costs make a difference.”
“Yes, it's true that earmarks are only 1 percent of all federal spending, but earmarks have a cultural effect on Congress that is much larger than their cost. It fuses Congress together with lobbyists and creates a culture of government spending as a means to re-election, which bleeds into other areas.”
“342 separate economic development programs [and] similar massive duplications.”
“The White House always says it's [due to] defense and homeland security...but even without defense and homeland security it's record spending. The brakes are off everywhere.”
“Earmarks could be worthy or not, but we still consider it corrupting because lawmakers are deciding who gets a grant.”
“Budgets are political documents, and this budget will likely have the goal of trying to show a declining deficit without endangering anyone's re-election prospects.”
“There is no shortage of candidates for elimination. There is only the shortage of political will to make the difficult decisions.”
“More than anything else, this one program threatens the long-term federal budget.”
“I generally would still not count that as an earmark, even though it has a similar effect, because it is such a gray area of how specific is too specific when setting eligibility criteria. I obviously oppose those provisions, but I would not classify them the same as spending earmarks that actually list the name.”
