Hillary Clinton, The Queen of Earmarks (She LOVES The War Machine)

KittyWampus

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Thu Mar-13-08 11:08 PM
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Hillary Clinton, The Queen of Earmarks (She LOVES The War Machine)

Edited on Thu Mar-13-08 11:31 PM by cryingshame

The Queen of Earmarks?
ARI BERMAN
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=205270

There is nothing inherently wrong with "earmarks," which the Sunlight Foundation describes as "a provision in legislation that directs funds to be spent on specific projects." But in recent years earmarking has become a symbol of the culture of corruption in Washington, used and abused by crooked politicians like Duke Cunningham and Conrad Burns to benefit wealthy benefactors.

The Hill reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton inserted more earmarks into the latest defense spending bill than any other Senator except for Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin. The 26 earmarks, totaling $148.4 million, mostly went to the New York-based defense industry. (For more on Hillary's ties to military contractors, see the Village Voice article "Mama Warbucks.")

These earmarks appear to be legitimate and above board. But that didn't stop the RNC from calling Hillary the "President of Pork" or John McCain from noting that the Pentagon did not request them.

And Hillary is vulnerable on the issue. When the Senate debated lobbying and ethics reforms in January, Clinton voted against requiring public disclosure of earmark sponsors and earmark recipients, and to change the definition of an earmark to include both federal and non-federal projects.

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From same Defense spending Bill:

By contrast, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), also a Democratic presidential candidate and Clinton’s rival for the nomination, has only one request in the defense bill.

Obama, who is not a member of the committee, made a request along with several other members for a Department of Education program for children with severe disabilities.

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Barack Obama's presidential campaign today released his pork requests for 2005 and 2006, calling on rival Hillary Clinton to reveal the same information in the interest of government transparency.

“If Senator Clinton will not agree to join Senator Obama in releasing her earmark requests," communications director Robert Gibbs said, "voters should ask why she doesn’t believe they have the right to know she wants to spend their tax dollars.”

Actually, people have been asking that of both Obama and Clinton for a while now -- and the questioning could grow uncomfortably tense as presumptive Republican nominee John McCain champions a plan to ban earmarks for a year.

McCain is a leading opponent of earmarks, those taxpayer-funded pet projects that every lawmaker gets to put in for each year, which gives him wide range to criticize the Democratic candidates who participate in the earmark process.

Obama had already released his 2007 earmark requests, and also worked to pass a measure making it easier for people to search federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans on-line.