Senator Lott, It Is Our Business
According to Mark Tapscott, Senator Lott is "damn tired" of people who check up on Congress' work. Of course, he is referring to Pork Busters.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the Republican from Mississippi, has had it to here with Porkbusters and other critics of pork barrel spending like Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who think the federal government has better things to do with $700 million of the taxpayers money than tear up a just-repaired coastal rail line and replace it with a new highway. Apparently the plan is that a new rail line would be built just north of the existing one.
Said Lott when asked by an AP reporter about criticism of the project he has long championed and which was just funded in a Senate Appropriations Committee bill to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional Hurricane Katrina relief:
"I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina. We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We've been very reasonable."
Nearly $300 million worth of repairs to the line were just completed in January, financed by CSX Railroad and its insurance company. No word yet on how CSX or its insurance company feel about the plan favored by Lott and his fellow Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran to tear up the tracks and replace them with a highway to serve the heavily populated coastal region.
No one is questioning the amount of money sent to Mississippi. It, like New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, was hammered pretty hard under Katrine. Had we not thought so, we wouldn't have contributed the money for relief that we did. However, it is our business how our money is spent. But, Mark's not done yet.
Cochran is the Appropriations Committee Chairman.Coburn thinks the project is a perfect example of the sort of wasteful spending that has poisoned the national political process. He told AP:
"It is ludicrous for the Senate to spend $700 million to destroy and relocate a rail line that is in perfect working order, particularly when it recently underwent a ... repair."
Citizens Against Government Waste's Tom Schatz is no more impressed than Coburn, telling AP:
"For $700 million, the Congress could certainly do a lot more to help people that are still without homes. It's certainly unclear what this has to do with an emergency. It sounds like a wish list from the senators from Mississippi."
CAGW just released the latest version of its annual Pig Book.
It was Lott who last week used a legislative technicality to kill a Coburn amendment to another spending bill that would have required the Office of Management and Budget in the White House to establish a comprehensive public database of all government grants, including extensive information about the recipients and the purposes of each grant.
Go here for the full AP story.
It seems as though we have a problem, and it includes a senator that has had his first go-round with bloggers just a few years ago. We helped him to the door as the GOP's majority leader in the Senate. And WE have to agree with the waves rippling through the blogosphere. It is time, ladies and gentlemen, that Trent Lott was shown the door, permanently.
Some people are going to lose it with this call, be we're serious. The platform that the GOP must stand on includes controlling the spending. And it is beneficial to the nation to know that the party they put in charge knows how to control the purse-strings, and can balance a checkbook; but, not to do so on our backs.It is our business when Congress call in the taxes where our money is going. At this point in time, we're at war. The "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that was killed was done so correctly. It was a start. The excess money that congressmen and women tuck away for "pet projects" needs to stop.
This was a part of what outraged so many people when it popped up to begin with. For Lott to assail bloggers for doing what they do best, and calling it to everyone's attention, is positively idiotic. We have had "watchdogs" over the government for a long time. Is it so wrong for the average American to check up on the people they have elected--vested trust in--to do their jobs properly? And is it not also our right to bring it to their attention when we disagree with them in their choices? I believe it is. I do believe that it is inherently accepted under the First Amendment that that "speech" referred to there meant our political speech. Add the "redress of grievances" point, and Senator Lott should be quiet.
What Senator Lott seems to have forgotten is here is there at our sufferance. What he has also forgotten is that we, the taxpayer, ultimately write the checks. And if we do not want to see Robert Byrd's name on one more thing in West Virginia on our dimes, then the check shouldn't be cut. It's that simple. And if a standing US senator can't get this simple concept--at a time when his party needs to prove to America that they deserve their majority--then maybe it's time he was voted out. To the people in Mississippi I ask that you seriously consider removing Lott in the primary, and put up a solid conservative. Hugh Hewitt believes we have a big tent for the party. I agree. We have room for a few moderates.
But we do not have the temperment to tolerate a lecture from a man who cannot seem to rein in his own spending, at times, and receive a chastising over wanting to know where my money is going. That cannot be tolerated. It is not as if we are asking to see his home life--his personal life. We only want to know where our money is going, and an empowered "army" will not be cowed by any sort of verbal rebuke. Pork Busters will continue to watch Congress. That is their self-imposed job. And they do a fine job, at that. But Senator Lott went one step too far in going after the bloggers, and he multiplied his problems when he tried to cut Senator Coburn off at the knees.
The Bunny ;)
Publius II
According to Mark Tapscott, Senator Lott is "damn tired" of people who check up on Congress' work. Of course, he is referring to Pork Busters.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the Republican from Mississippi, has had it to here with Porkbusters and other critics of pork barrel spending like Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who think the federal government has better things to do with $700 million of the taxpayers money than tear up a just-repaired coastal rail line and replace it with a new highway. Apparently the plan is that a new rail line would be built just north of the existing one.
Said Lott when asked by an AP reporter about criticism of the project he has long championed and which was just funded in a Senate Appropriations Committee bill to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional Hurricane Katrina relief:
"I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina. We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We've been very reasonable."
Nearly $300 million worth of repairs to the line were just completed in January, financed by CSX Railroad and its insurance company. No word yet on how CSX or its insurance company feel about the plan favored by Lott and his fellow Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran to tear up the tracks and replace them with a highway to serve the heavily populated coastal region.
No one is questioning the amount of money sent to Mississippi. It, like New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, was hammered pretty hard under Katrine. Had we not thought so, we wouldn't have contributed the money for relief that we did. However, it is our business how our money is spent. But, Mark's not done yet.
Cochran is the Appropriations Committee Chairman.Coburn thinks the project is a perfect example of the sort of wasteful spending that has poisoned the national political process. He told AP:
"It is ludicrous for the Senate to spend $700 million to destroy and relocate a rail line that is in perfect working order, particularly when it recently underwent a ... repair."
Citizens Against Government Waste's Tom Schatz is no more impressed than Coburn, telling AP:
"For $700 million, the Congress could certainly do a lot more to help people that are still without homes. It's certainly unclear what this has to do with an emergency. It sounds like a wish list from the senators from Mississippi."
CAGW just released the latest version of its annual Pig Book.
It was Lott who last week used a legislative technicality to kill a Coburn amendment to another spending bill that would have required the Office of Management and Budget in the White House to establish a comprehensive public database of all government grants, including extensive information about the recipients and the purposes of each grant.
Go here for the full AP story.
It seems as though we have a problem, and it includes a senator that has had his first go-round with bloggers just a few years ago. We helped him to the door as the GOP's majority leader in the Senate. And WE have to agree with the waves rippling through the blogosphere. It is time, ladies and gentlemen, that Trent Lott was shown the door, permanently.
Some people are going to lose it with this call, be we're serious. The platform that the GOP must stand on includes controlling the spending. And it is beneficial to the nation to know that the party they put in charge knows how to control the purse-strings, and can balance a checkbook; but, not to do so on our backs.It is our business when Congress call in the taxes where our money is going. At this point in time, we're at war. The "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that was killed was done so correctly. It was a start. The excess money that congressmen and women tuck away for "pet projects" needs to stop.
This was a part of what outraged so many people when it popped up to begin with. For Lott to assail bloggers for doing what they do best, and calling it to everyone's attention, is positively idiotic. We have had "watchdogs" over the government for a long time. Is it so wrong for the average American to check up on the people they have elected--vested trust in--to do their jobs properly? And is it not also our right to bring it to their attention when we disagree with them in their choices? I believe it is. I do believe that it is inherently accepted under the First Amendment that that "speech" referred to there meant our political speech. Add the "redress of grievances" point, and Senator Lott should be quiet.
What Senator Lott seems to have forgotten is here is there at our sufferance. What he has also forgotten is that we, the taxpayer, ultimately write the checks. And if we do not want to see Robert Byrd's name on one more thing in West Virginia on our dimes, then the check shouldn't be cut. It's that simple. And if a standing US senator can't get this simple concept--at a time when his party needs to prove to America that they deserve their majority--then maybe it's time he was voted out. To the people in Mississippi I ask that you seriously consider removing Lott in the primary, and put up a solid conservative. Hugh Hewitt believes we have a big tent for the party. I agree. We have room for a few moderates.
But we do not have the temperment to tolerate a lecture from a man who cannot seem to rein in his own spending, at times, and receive a chastising over wanting to know where my money is going. That cannot be tolerated. It is not as if we are asking to see his home life--his personal life. We only want to know where our money is going, and an empowered "army" will not be cowed by any sort of verbal rebuke. Pork Busters will continue to watch Congress. That is their self-imposed job. And they do a fine job, at that. But Senator Lott went one step too far in going after the bloggers, and he multiplied his problems when he tried to cut Senator Coburn off at the knees.
The Bunny ;)
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 11:56 PM
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