If Congress is unable to hold down spending on relatively small things, what hope is there that it will reform entitlements and other big programs in the federal budget that form the bulk of our fast-rising $12.5 trillion national debt?
Recently in the Senate, Republicans introduced a measure that would have put just a one-year ban on so-called “earmark” spending for home-state projects that lawmakers use to buy votes.
Now, as serious, wasteful and often unconstitutional as earmarks and pork-barrel spending are, they are small by comparison with budget-busting entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, which are fast going broke. And yet even this proposed small spending restraint was defeated. Almost all Senate Democrats joined a handful of Republicans to kill the measure, so that the pork could keep flowing back home.
“Americans now know that we buy votes with earmarks,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. “Isn’t it time we just take a time-out for one year and see if we can reform the system?”
A majority of his colleagues apparently thought not. It seems that spending restraint is still not high among the priorities of many members of Congress. Will voters do something about that in November?