Sen. Webb Helps Kill Earmark Ban
By Brian Kirwin | Tuesday, November 30th, 2010 | PolicyThe United States Senate voted down a ban on earmarks today by a vote of 39-56.
Sen. Jim Webb opposed the ban and voted no.
Sen. Mark Warner voted for the earmark ban.
I’d love to hear how Virginia Democrats spin this. Their two Senators cast completely opposite votes regarding pork-barrel earmark spending.
With the new Senate in 2011, this issue is sure to come up again. Wonder if Webb will continue his passionate advocacy for earmarks as 2012 draws nearer.
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The right wants to jeer him. The left wants to censor him. Moderates usually want both. Brian Kirwin is a political consultant and public relations strategist in Virginia Beach with a lightning-rod flair. Brian also serves on the VB Arts & Humanities Commission and frequently appears on Hampton Roads theatrical stages, if only to prove that all actors aren’t liberals. Kirwin’s columns stir up debate and hit the political scene with no punches pulled.
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14 Responses to "Sen. Webb Helps Kill Earmark Ban"
Good ol’ Webb, true to his leftie roots.
Senator Webb, I am a constituent. I vote in every election. I am part of the tsunami that swept over the House. I shall remember this when it comes time to cast my vote in the next Senatorial election.
You sir, are one of the Democrats who still don’t get the ramifications of Nov 2. And you are a huge part of the problem.
On the other hand, I applaud Senator Warner for standing up for what is right, and voting against earmarks.
Webb does what Harry Reid tells him to do.
This is how I “spin” it as a Democrat. As a Democrat, I’m not opposed to earmarks. So I have no problem with Webb voting to keep them.
As a political partisan, I can see how taking away the issue from Republicans could be effective politics, so I fully understand why Warner voted against them.
All elected officials are two things — political creatures and people making decisions they believe are best for their constituents. Both sides are necessary for effective politicians (regardless of party.) In this case, the Democratic beliefs won out in Webb, while the political savvy won out in Warner. Not that complicated, really.
Wow, Gretchen. That is some real logic gymnastics there.
I’ve got a less complicated explanation: Webb is entering a re-election cycle and Warner isn’t. Earmarks are critical to raising bribes, uh, I mean campaign contributions, and Webb is going to need a war chest of epic proportions to fight off the Republican challenge. When people of the other party are standing in line to primary against you, that is not a good omen. Just ask Tom Whats-his-name down in VA-5.
Earmarks – a lot of noise about something that matters very little. In fact, most earmarks don’t increase federal spending. They just let our elected representatives decide exactly how the money will be spent instead of unelected bureacrats.
Instead of wading through the voting blocks at the link, here is how the vote broke out along party lines.
Seven Republicans voted against the ban:
James Inhofe (Okla.)
Dick Lugar (Ind.)
Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) (No big surprise.)
David Vitter (La.)
Bob Bennett (Utah)
Richard Shelby (Ala.)
Thad Cochran (Miss.)
Only seven Democrats voted in favor of the ban:
Evan Bayh (Ind.)
Michael Bennet (Colo.)
Russ Feingold (Wis.)
Claire McCaskill (Mo.)
Bill Nelson (Fla.)
Mark Udall (Colo.)
Mark Warner (Va.)
In an all too common display of political cowardice, two Democrats conveniently arrived too late to vote:
Sens. Barbara Mikulski (Md.)
Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.)
Way to stand up and be counted on principles, girls.
The Senate Democrats haven’t learned anything from November 2. I can’t wait to see how the voters will react to this in 2012 when the Senate has been using pork barrel spending to raise campaign cash while raising taxes and cutting Social Security at the same time. It’s gonna be ugly and bloody.
Steve,
That has been a DNC talking point for years and it is fallacious. Even if an earmark doesn’t increase the President’s Budget overall, and it often does, the offset comes at the expense of another program that has survived the full-disclosure scrutiny of “unelected bureaucrats.”
Take a look at John Murtha’s Defense Department earmarks over the years, particularly the ones that went to companies owned by his family members and to the ones that created the Murtha Airport that has three flights a day, and try to tell me with a straight face that earmarks are a good thing.
I don’t think earmarks are good or bad. I believe that wise politicians use a tool at their disposal wisely, and foolish ones use them foolishly. And of course, my idea of wisdom is another man’s foolishness. I have no objection to them being cut out altogether (more money for the federal government, after all) or continuing the practice, even if it means some areas get more than their fair share. (Let’s remember that I’m a native West Virginian.)
But that’s the beauty of being a Democrat!!
A couple of years ago the Washington Post had a very interesting series on the lobbyist who first got this whole earmark thing happening.
They can be good if they are used properly but sometimes you get individuals who slip earmarks in late when no one knows anything about them.
Steve, it’s just intellectually dishonest to say that “most earmarks don’t increase federal spending”. It seems childish and obvious to point out to you that it’s not just the amount of the earmark, but the actual process which is afoot.
Take the $787 billion stimulus. An obscene sum. But, since the D’s had control of both chambers, it was pretty easy to see it was going to get passed. There was no reason to negotiate with R holdouts and, say, maybe decrease the amount to $500 billion. Instead, all that was needed was to grease the paws of a few D senators, maybe to the tune of $200k each in five different cases. So the amount of the earmarks would actually only add up to $1 billion, but the whole procedure of negotiation would be sidestepped.
So did the earmarks cost $1 billion, the actual cash value of the goodies, or did it cost the American taxpayers $200 billion or more? Dems always want to look at the cash value, which makes this issue look meaningless.
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…wrote $200k, meant $200 mil…
HR: I didn’t say earmarks were good or bad. I said they weren’t important enough to warrant all the attention they are getting. It’s a trivial issue in light of the fiscal problems we face.
Brad: Again, most earmarks do not increase the budget. They allocate funds already targeted to a federal agency to a specific project, usually in the earmarking member’s state or district. It’s the same pork barrel politics we’ve always had. Eliminating earmarks won’t do much to shrink the budget, it will just let the folks at the agencies make the decisions on how to spend the money. And even if you subtracted every earmarked project from the budget, it would be a drop in the bucket of the kind of fiscal corrections we need to make. But it’s easier to grandstand on this issue than talk about entitlement reform or not underwriting our economic competitors by picking up their defense costs.
Steve, I never took the chance to say “thank you” for responding to my comment after apparently not reading it.
Here again with the Bush tax cut compromise, which is looking worse and worse by the minute, we have an interesting study in earmarks and the short-circuiting of the procedure of debate.
Heritage reports that Harry Reid is larding up the bill with subsidies for wind and solar and ethanol to buy the votes of Democrat senators in WA, CA, and IA. If these measures secure the necessary votes to get a bad bill passed, then I’ll ask my question again:
Is the true “cost” of the earmarks essentially the value of the few subsidies which are thrown into some senators’ home districts (who cares if they’re only a reallocation of funds already targeted…), or is the “cost” of the earmarks the actual value of a bad piece of legislation which, in this case, starts at $57 billion for just the 13-month extension of unemployment benefits! I’ll give you one guess.
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