Democrats to Give $3.5 Million of Your Tax Dollars to La Raza ("The Race")

Here piggie, piggie! Billions in fed trough Millions earmarked for La Raza radicals, Charlie Rangel library, more 2008 pork
Posted: October 19, 20071:33 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. (Bloomberg News)WASHINGTON – It looks like Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is going to get his wish – $2 million in taxpayer funding for a library commemorating his 37 years in the House of Representatives.
The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public service will serve as a repository for his “papers,” and the congressman will have his own office in the Harlem complex. The facility has already attracted some $25 million in funding from private sources.
Rangel suggests the project will someday be “as important as the Carter and Clinton libraries.”
That’s just one of hundreds of so-called “earmarks,” pet projects of members of the House and Senate, costing taxpayers billions set for approval in the 2008 budget.
The pork-barrel spending planned for next year includes $3.5 million for La Raza, sometimes described as a radical hate group which advocates a takeover of parts of the U.S. Southwest by Mexico.

A plan by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, both Democrats from New York, to spend $1 million on a Woodstock museum was shot down this week to the astonishment of its backers.
But plenty of other pork is still on the plate:
$1 million for the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, requested by Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both Democrats from Arkansas;
$200,000 for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, requested by Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada;
$3.74 million for research into the Formosan Subterranean Termite, requested by Reps. Rodney Alexander and Richard Baker of Louisiana;
AFL-CIO Working for America Institute, requested by Sen. Tom Harkin;
$750,000 for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, requested by Clinton, Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid;
$3.76 million for the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, requested by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison;
$1 million for the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, requested by Sen. Thad Cochrane, Republican of Mississippi;
$150,000 for rodent control on the Aleutian Islands, requested by Ted Stevens of Alaska;
$250,000 to build the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Washington, requested by Rep. Doc Hastings.
$470,000 to study the Asian Long-Horned Beetle, requested by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois;
$244,077 for bee research in Weslaco, Texas, requested by Rep. Chet Edwards;
$213,386 to study the Oliver Fruit Fly in Montpelier, France, requested by Mike Thompson of California;
$1.7 million for the Centers for Disease Control to fund a Hollywood liaison to advise doctor dramas;
$5.1 million for “audio and visual integration” in the CDC’s new Thomas R. Harkin communications and visitor center – and, yes, that is Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is sick of this kind of spending. He was responsible for leading the successful fight against the Woodstock Museum.
Not only did he question the propriety and constitutionality of spending taxpayer money on building a commemorative facility to the 1969 rock music festival, but he pointed out the project had all the “earmarks” of a political quid pro quo.
The museum is being funded by billionaire Alan Gerry and his foundation, which has investment income of $24 million a year. Gerry donated $229,000 to political campaigns, with much of it going to support Clinton and Schumer, the senators carrying water for his pet project.
Coburn has offered an amendment calling on the Senate to place a temporary moratorium on transportation pork until all structurally deficient bridges are repaired. His measure was defeated 82-14.
Coburn is the author of the WND Book, “Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders.”
A report by the Heritage Foundation last week found some 11,351 pork projects in the House and Senate appropriations bills.
“If this legislation passes, thousands of government grants will be distributed based on political, lobbying and/or campaign donations, rather than on merit,” says Brian M. Riedl, author of the report.
He also points out it was the incoming Democratic leadership, particularly in the House, that promised to clean up pork-barrel spending.
Earlier this year, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., announced his intention to keep secret the pork projects in spending bills until after the bills had passed the House, Riedl says. Public pressure forced him to back down.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58239

GOP hits Democrats for failure on earmarks

GOP hits Democrats for failure on earmarks
By Sean LengellAugust 28, 2007
House Minority Leader Rep. John A. Boehner wrote in National Review that “tax and authorizing bills have been vehicles for some of the most indefensible earmarks produced by Congress, under both Democrats and Republicans.”
Capitol Hill Republicans say Democrats have done little to cull “earmarks,” or pet projects, from legislation, despite Democratic assertions the party has instituted sweeping reforms to the process.
Democratic leaders have used the congressional August recess to tout new rules requiring earmarks to be fully described and their sponsor identified.
Members of Congress who sponsor earmarks also now must certify that they have no personal financial interest in them.
“These reforms should end the abuses we saw in Congress over the past years” wrote Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the third-ranking Democrat in the House, in an opinion piece published Friday in the New York Times.
“The old earmark process empowered the special interests. Now, in the space of a few months, the new Democratic Congress has taken earmarks out of the shadows.”
But House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Mr. Emanuel’s assertion that new Democratic rules have resulted in a more open and transparent earmark process is “simply false.”
Mr. Boehner said new rules adopted by House Democrats prohibit lawmakers from forcing a debate and vote on individual earmarks contained in authorizing and tax bills brought to the chamber floor.
“Tax and authorizing bills have been vehicles for some of the most indefensible earmarks produced by Congress, under both Democrats and Republicans,” wrote Mr. Boehner in a piece that appeared Saturday on the National Review’s online edition.

House Republicans in June blocked a Democratic proposal to allow earmarks in spending bills only during the conference process — when a limited number of lawmakers from each chamber meet to hammer out differences between the bills passed — while barring them during committee hearings and on the floor.
Many Republicans say the only way to reform the earmark process is to eliminate the practice.
“Congress has proven time and time again that it is incapable of policing itself,” said Aaron Cooper, a spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican and longtime advocate of eliminating earmarks.
The debate over earmarks is expected to intensify in the coming as weeks, as the Senate debates several spending bills for fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1.
Mr. Boehner said Democrats also are going back on their word to eliminate earmarks, citing comments from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, last year that earmarks should be abolished.
Democratic leaders said they never promised to eliminate earmarks but rather only to reform the process in which they’re inserted into bills.
“Putting all earmarks in the same boat, as critics often do, distorts the debate and does a disservice to the public,” Mr. Emanuel said. “Not all earmarks are equal.”
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, South Carolina Democrat, said many earmarks are necessary, as long as the process is made public.
“I totally disagree with people in Congress who say we ought to get rid of earmarks,” Mr. Clyburn said. “When [constituents] come to see you looking for help, and you say, ‘well, I’ve got to wait to see if the president is going to put that in his budget request’ … that’s kind of silly to me.”
A spokesman for Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican and an advocate of earmark reform, said while Mr. Clyburn’s position “sounds good in theory,” the earmark system is the wrong way to fund worthwhile projects.
“It’s not that some projects are not meritorious, but why do they have to be funded through a system that is inherently corrupting and prone to favoritism and to waste,” DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070828/NATION/108280038/1001

House Slips 1,776 Earmarks Into Defense Bill

House Slips 1,776 Earmarks Into Defense Bill
Earmarks, the widely derided process Congress uses to load bills with pork for the home folks, are alive and kicking the taxpayers on the shins – the defense appropriations bill in the House is loaded with over 1,700 of the things.
After making much noise over the appositeness of a process that allows members of Congress to slip pet programs into a spending bill House members appear to have celebrated independence Day 1776 by inserting 1776 earmarks in the defense bill, the Politico.Com’s Crypt reports’
Chief earmarker was Florida Republican Bill Young, with 59 goodies for his district, and hot on his heels was none other than Pennsylvania Democrat Jack Murtha with 46 requests.
Also high on the list was the woman who claims to be the chief proponent of reform in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who got 15 pet projects included.
Here are the double-digit requesters:
Member – Earmarks Requested
Young, C.W. Bill 59
Murtha, John 46
Lewis, Jerry 38
Moran, James 30
Visclosky, Peter 28
Kingston, Jack 26
Tiahrt, Todd 25
Dicks, Norman 24
Kaptur, Marcy 21
Cramer, Robert 20
Frelinghuysen, Rodney 20
Hobson, David 20
Boyd, Allen 19
Meehan, Martin 18
Bishop, Sanford 18
Pelosi, Nancy 15
Rothman, Steven 15
Price, David 13
Reynolds, Thomas 11
Wicker, Roger 11
Hoyer, Steny 11
Obey, David 10
Hunter, Duncan 10
Olver, John 10
Capuano, Michael 10
Marshall, Jim 10
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/7/27/150319.shtml?s=ic