We know the Constitution gives the purse strings to the House.
I'm sick and tired - and the American people are sick and tired - of the pork barrel spending.
Both parties in Washington waste too much of your money. When I worked there, I helped expose waste and abuse by government contractors.
It is necessary to watch people in Washington all the time to keep them from unnecessary expenditure of money.
In the private sector we budget for rainy days or offset unexpected expenditures with spending cuts and the same principles should apply to Congress.
Politicians like to confuse congressional spending with earmarks. There is a difference.
In Congress, it's all pork, all the time.
I don't disagree with Senator McCain when he talks about the earmark process.
Earmarks are almost always inserted by a member of Congress without any notice to other members, and without a chance for Congress as a whole to debate a particular earmark as they relate to national priorities.
Each year Citizens Against Government Waste releases the 'Congressional Pig Book.' Outrage over spending for shrimp on treadmills, combating Goth culture studies, bridges to nowhere, etc. ensues for about a week, and then the waste continues.
If a trip is worth taking, members of Congress should be prepared to justify paying for it out of their office accounts.
I have never been opposed to earmarks.
We know that appropriators will fight these cutbacks. But by eliminating earmarks, we can stop the horse trading that grows agency budgets.
The truth is the Republican leadership has created a credit card Congress that is recklessly selling out the future of America, our children and our grandchildren, and President Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible President in the history of America.
The Pig Book
The budgets we work on in Congress are more than just fiscal documents; they are a reflection of our moral values as well. In choosing where to spend money, members of Congress choose what priorities they value.
Why shouldn't future generations and young Americans have the choice to earn a higher rate of return? Why shouldn't they be able to own their own Social Security so that Congress can't spend it on other things?
There's no doubt about it, earmarks are not very popular. There are good earmarks and bad earmarks. The good earmarks are the ones I get for my district.
Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs about the proper role of government in our society. Too many members of Congress believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs. We must reject unlimited government and reassert the constitutional rule of law if we hope to halt the spending orgy.
It's wrong that members of Congress can purchase luxury airfare with taxpayer money when many families in my district and across the county are struggling to make ends meet.
The longer people are in Congress, the bigger spenders they become.
I have saved $1,638,580 over my four years. That may not seem like a lot, faced with our deficit, but multiply it by 435 members of the House - and then the senators get three times as much - and you are adding up several millions in savings.
