Word: earmarked
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...funding infusion—announced Wednesday by Mass. Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 at CHA headquarters as part of $764 million of federal stimulus funding the state will earmark for health care—follows recent moves at CHA to close clinics, cut services, and lay off hundreds of employees as the Alliance struggled to manage a $55 million cut in state and federal funds announced last October...
...billion economic stimulus package, followed by a $300 billion fund in June to help distressed mortgage holders. Then came $350 billion for the banks (and a little of that for the car companies), another $350 billion for the banks, $787 billion in economic stimulus and $410 billion in an earmark-packed spending package for fiscal 2009 that Congress passed on Tuesday. Dizzy? A little nauseous? So are the moderate Democrats in Congress who are usually the gatekeepers of the federal piggy bank - the same fiscal conservatives who helped lead the bipartisan coalition in the Senate that held up and scaled...
...true, as McCain pointed out during his unsuccessful effort to delete all the earmarks in the spending bill, that earmark abuses have landed politicians like former Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham in prison. Those abuses were especially rampant when congressmen were permitted to slip earmarks into legislation without taking responsibility - non-earmarked earmarks, in a way - but Obama helped spearhead an effort to eliminate that practice after Democrats took back Congress. It is also true that earmarks can be a sneaky way for boondoggles to bypass hearings, public comment periods, cost-benefit analyses and other forms of scrutiny...
...even true, as this earmarks are not the only way they bring home the bacon. In fact, the earmarks in the current budget bill amount to only $7.7 billion, less than 2% of the overall spending...
...That's a real problem. Obama recently released his 2010 budget outline, which addresses those larger issues. He also pledged a new framework for additional earmark reforms for 2010. But it's lame for Obama's aides to dismiss the 2009 budget as leftover business from the Bush era. He's the President. He wasn't elected to ignore the leftover business from the Bush era. He ought to be taking heat for punting - not only on the earmarks, but on the other $402 billion worth of government spending. But his critics, from McCain on the Senate floor to Maureen...