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Monday, May 08, 2006

Public's Top Concern: Ending Pork Barrel Spending

John Fund of The Wall Street Journal notes that the public has decided that pork-barrel spending should stop, and Republicans may finally be listening:

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll offered respondents a menu of legislative action Congress could address before it goes home this year. Asked to choose which should be its top priority, a stunning 39% selected "prohibiting Members of Congress from directing federal funds to specific projects benefiting only certain constituents"--i.e., the pork-barrel spending at the heart of the Congressional earmark process. Immigration reform was in second place with 32%. It would be ironic if the big-spending strategy Tom DeLay thought was a key to shoring up incumbents and keeping GOP control of Congress winds up ending that control.

One of the messages that [Republican strategist Kenneth] Mehlman tried to convey last week to Republicans on Capitol Hill is that continued inaction and business-as-usual behavior by Congress are an easy ticket to losses in this fall's elections. "We have met the enemy, and too often it is us," one GOP member told me. "We either learn lessons from our mistakes in the next few weeks or our own voters will teach us in November by staying home."

Evidently there is no hope whatever that Democrats will get the message, but half a loaf is better than having the whole thing taxed away.

2 comments:

Jay D. Homnick said...

The key line, and a point that I have made in a number of recent articles, is that the danger to Republicans is not from Democrats, or even from undecided types drifting to the Democrats.

It is from their voters "staying home".

James F. Elliott said...

"Evidently there is no hope whatever that Democrats will get the message, but half a loaf is better than having the whole thing taxed away."

Didn't the Democratic Caucus in the House pledge to return to the "pay-as-you-go" controls of the Clinton era?