Members of Congress often just can’t resist the urge to boast about how many federal tax dollars they have brought back to the home folks. Once in a while when they do, they end up spilling the beans on the con game being played by Washington politicians on earmarks.
Rep. Marion Berry, D-AR, may not have realized a journalist was in the audience recently when he addressed a local group and started talking about earmarks. Here’s the key series of quotes, as reported by Dewitt Era-Enterprise reporter Frank Scott:
“I think that by the time [the appropriation bills] get on his desk he [Bush] will be so slap-happy thathe will sign it,” Berry said.
In answer to a question from Arkansas County Judge Glenn “Sonny” Cox, Berry said that he had put a request for $4 million for an overpass over the railroad tracks on Park Street (U.S. 165) in Stuttgart in the budget.
Berry also used the opportunity to define “earmarks,” projects put into the budget by representatives and senators to benefit portions of their local constituencies. Many media outlets have blamed the proliferation of these earmarks for at least part of the soaring budget deficits in recent years.
“The big papers are hung up on earmarks,” Berry told the local leaders. “They see a bypass in Stuttgart as a waste of money. They overlook the fact that this administration earmarks everything.”
The feeling of members of Congress, Berry said, “is that we know more about how money should be spent in our districts than the Department of Transportation.
Which of course raises an interesting question I would love to ask the Honorable Gentleman from Arkansas: If you know so much about where federal dollars should be spent, why don’t you come out from behind those closed doors and share your expertise with the rest of us who get to pay for it?
UPDATE: Berry Wants to be Known as “King of Pork”
Andy Roth at the Club for Growth just reminded me of a news story that appeared last year in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in which Berry said “nothing would please me more” when asked if he wanted to be known as the king of pork.
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