Word: budgetable
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...case of the current budget, Republicans - who themselves account for 40% of the earmark requests - are howling at what they view as Obama's blatant hypocrisy. House minority leader John Boehner and nine other House Republicans sent Pelosi and Obama a letter asking for a freeze in spending levels and for a re-examination of the earmarks in the bill. "There are 9,000 reasons to vote against this spending bill - 9,000 earmarks slipped and crammed into this pork-stuffed nightmare," Representative John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican, said on Wednesday in a statement. "Last night, President Obama bragged about...
...Senate majority leader Harry Reid on Wednesday defended the 2009 earmarks, arguing that while Democrats have worked to shrink the number of earmarks in recent years, such pet projects do play a vital role in the budget. Who better knows the needs of each district and state, he argued, than the members representing those populations? "Since we've been a country, we have had an obligation as a Congress to help direct spending," Reid told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We cannot let spending be done by a bunch of nameless, faceless bureaucrats buried in this town someplace...
...Still, Ellis and other observers argue that the fiscal-2009 budget's level of earmarking is too high and that projects such as $1.8 million for swine odor and manure management in Iowa, $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Wyoming, $400,000 to combat bullying in Montana and $2.2 million to study grape genetics in New York are easily ridiculed and embarrassing. And they show the risk of one-party control of both the executive and legislative branches of government - which was amply demonstrated by George W. Bush and congressional Republicans...
...part of the $3.5 trillion budget he proposed on Thursday, President Barack Obama is pushing for a down payment on universal health care, a reserve fund of $634 billion over 10 years paid for by higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and savings from government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. By putting the funding on the table before the program has even been crafted, though, Obama is essentially putting the cart before the horse. Many health-care analysts hope to see more details of the President's plan during a White House health-care summit expected...
...praise the new momentum Obama has breathed into the talks this week, including the breakout session on health in his fiscal-responsibility summit on Monday, the underlining of his commitment to health-care reform in his address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday and in his budget announcement on Thursday, and his announcement of a health-care summit for next week. "This is a frank and respectful discussion that essentially began in earnest on Monday," says Dr. Nancy Nielsen, president of the AMA. "What we're hearing from him is that there is an urgent need for health...