Republicans Pledge Leadership on Earmarks

Monday, November 15, 2010 8:41 AM

ATR and CFA are ecstatic that Republican Leader McConnell has come out in support of Senator DeMint's proposed earmark moratorium for the Senate Republican Conference. The moratorium, which would ban Republican Senators from requesting pork, will be up for a vote in the Conference tomorrow. Today, we sent a joint letter to the hill urging Senators to support such a ban, as it would stand as a strong signal that Republicans are ready and willing to lead as prudential stewards of their consituents' tax dollars. From our letter:

Earmarks are the broken windows of budgets—though they may be considerably small in terms of spending, they pave the way for massive spending that would be unable to gain passage on its own merit. Otherwise conservative members of Congress will vote for politically sensitive spending packages because they contain pork for their districts. To end the deluge of federal spending, members must first end the practice of earmarking. 

Without the enticement of earmarks, taxpayers could have been saved nearly a trillion dollars in spending and debt on the so-called “stimulus” package, billions in the health care overhaul and the skyrocketing costs of pork-filled appropriations and authorizations.

Click here to read the letter in its entirety.

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