So much for “openness and transparency” in the new Democratic-controlled Congress for those earmark requests.
CNN informs us:
Staffers for only 31 of the 435 members of the House contacted by CNN between Wednesday and Friday of last week supplied a list of their earmark requests for fiscal year 2008, which begins on October 1, or pointed callers to Web sites where those earmark requests were posted.
Of the remainder, 68 declined to provide CNN with a list, and 329 either didn’t respond to requests or said they would get back to us, and didn’t.
“As long as we are not required to release them, we’re not going to,” said Dan Turner, an aide to Rep. Jim McCrery, R-Louisiana.
Shouldn’t the Democrats be setting the example by releasing each and every one of their earmark requests and requiring the release of all earmark requests? This is, of course, a bipartisan effort to withhold disclosure of how members of Congress want to waste our money. Republicans are guilty of this as well as Democrats, but the Democrats are in charge now. Seems to me that no significant change will happen if they keep enabling the status quo to protect themselves.
Tags: Republicans, Democrats, earmarks
You are truly naive if you think the Democrats are going to do anything different than the Republicans. Meet the the new boss, same as the old boss.
The problem is endemic to politics. None of them have been representatives of the people for a long time.
I knew the Democrats wouldn’t have brought more accountability and ethics to Congress when they were swept into power in November. What surprises me is that there were voters out there who believed that the Democrats would do what they promised to do (end the war, end the corruption). Anyone who pays attention to this political stuff at all knows that it would take more than changing all the politicians to fix Washington. There are a few good politicians, but the rest of them need early retirement.