#earmarks | #WhatTheyVotedFor
MEMORANDUM
To: Conservative Voters
re: Come up for air
Once upon a time, earmarks were a big deal. Or, rather, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe nobody ever had anything to say about the issue, ever.
The Republican-led House is being somewhat overshadowed by the nomination fights engulfing its Senate counterpart. But on the GOP side of the aisle, one of the issues that will start heating up in the coming weeks is the debate about bringing back earmarks.
The House Rules Committee will hold a series of hearings before making a decision about whether and how to soften the current earmark ban.
Rules Chairman Pete Sessions said members are frustrated by the House’s lack of control over spending priorities because of the earmark ban, noting that it’s approximately $18 billion of appropriated funds that the administration gets to decide how to spend instead of Congress.
See, after a while, the Republicans you elect prove the point: Whatever vaunted principle you’re invoking about this, that, or the other, and evil Democrats and blah blah blah? You do realize the only reason anyone should believe you is pretentious ritual and societal code?
No, really: After all this cry-wolf, the words coming out of your mouths simply are not believable. And the thing is―and this is key to understanding and addressing the #trumpswindle―the basis of that pretense is an asserted standard that it should somehow be impolite to simply presume that, because you are advocating conservative politics, you are necessarily aiming to swindle people. To the other, at some point your neighbors need some believable suggestion that all your fretting and wringing and bawling about principle isn’t just an eminence front.Do you think, just maybe you could ask your elected Republicans to not prove the lie?
That is to say, it becomes that much easier to look at the mess this Republican president and Congress are making and simply say it’s #WhatTheyVotedFor.
Which, in turn, brings us ’round the circle. Congressional Republicans are looking to revive earmarks? Of course they are. Is this really what you voted for? Sixty-two million nine hundred eighty-five thousand; that’s an impressive number, even if you all still add up to a lesser sum. The rest of us might not like it, but, you know, we kind of suspected you were lying, all along, because of stuff like this. Next time you come bawling about how the sky is stealing your children by sexually molesting your wallet with eleven emails sent and eleven received each day while you’re just trying to piss in peace without having to think about the nigger in the White House―well, at least you don’t have to bawl about that part, anymore, do you?―remind me again why the answer should be anything other than to remind you that you’re simply not trustworthy?
Earmarks.
Yeah, really. This is what you voted for? Of course it is.
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Image note: House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX32). (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
McPherson, Lindsey. “House Rules Committee Hearings to Flirt With Earmarks”. Roll Call. 3 February 2017.
This Is 