Today… President Obama has earned his first Flip-Flop award for flip-flopping on his campaign promise to change how business is done in Washington through vetoing bills with excessive earmarks. Behind closed doors, he signed the $410 billion omnibus budget bill that provides as much as 8-10% in increased funding for a number of governmental agencies through September of this year. The omnibus budget bill also contained more than 8,500 earmarked projects that will cost taxpayers more than $7.7 Billion … that’s Billion with a B … not pocket change by any measure of the word.
At a time when middle income taxpayers have had to tighten their belts to make ends meet, and when those same taxpayers are worried about whether they’ll even have jobs by the end of the week/month/year, Congress as well as the President apparently don’t understand that it’s no longer “last year” … that economic conditions have taken a severe downturn … and that the spending they just approved was excessive and totally inappropriate.
Spending earmarks that don’t have a corresponding budgetary offset should be outlawed!