Democrats take every opportunity to spend your tax dollars. The GOP was supposed to know better…
Unfortunately, the first thing the GOP did after they took control of the U.S. House – before the new Congress was even sworn in – they held a secret vote on earmarks. Last December, 158 GOP members of Congress voted to include earmarks in the year-end omnibus spending bill.
Those 158 secret-voting members caused $16,012,272,565 of your tax dollars to be spent on 7,509 earmarks.
Not only did those 158 members adopt earmarks, the Republicans spent more of your tax dollars than their Democratic earmarking colleagues.
In the fiscal year 2024 spending bills being debated this fall, the top 63 earmarkers in the U.S. House are Republicans. Eight of the top ten earmarkers in the U.S. Senate are Republicans.
The U.S. House has a bartender at the spendaholics earmark bar – Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas). She chairs the Appropriations Committee that approves every one of those earmarks. When she was elected to Congress in 1997, the federal debt was $5.4 trillion.
Here are a few examples of what these big spending members of Congress – in both parties – think is more important than the exploding federal debt.
Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) earmarked $302 million last December and $556 million stuffed inside the 2024 bills.
Maine’s population is only about 1.3 million and Collins earmarked $2,640 per family of four. When Collins was first elected in 1997, the federal debt was $5.4 trillion.
If every member of Congress earmarked the same for each citizen in their state as Sen. Collins did, the total amount of earmarks would be $220 billion!
Last December, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) earmarked $30 million to the University of Vermont Honors College. In May, the trustees renamed the college after Leahy. Leahy earmarked $34 million into the international airport at Burlington. In April, the city council renamed the airport after Leahy. Senator Leahy got his name on buildings after earmarking your tax dollars and every dime of it was borrowed against our national debt.
RINOs