I just got a message from House Majority Leader John Boehner* on the subject of fiscal responsibility.
While House Republicans are working to spend taxpayer dollars wisely by bringing greater transparency, disclosure, and accountability to government, Capitol Hill Democrats are advocating more spending with the use of earmarks – line-items sometimes inserted into bills at the last minute, with little or no scrutiny.
Granted that Boehner himself has at least paid lip service to massive earmark reforn (although without backing it up since assuming the Majority Leader’s mantle in February) the Republicans are hardly in a position to chide the Democrats for rampant spending and dubious relationships with lobbyists at the moment.
According to the Arlington Sun-Gazette, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) recently told a group of supporters: If Democrats win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran said he would use his position in the majority to help funnel more funds to his Northern Virginia district. “When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the (expletive) out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.
As opposed to the parsimonous, apolitical approach to spending taken by the Republican majority over the last eleven years?
You’ve got to admire the man’s audacity, if nothing else.
*It somehow eluded my spam filters.
