The Party of “NO!” is now looking like the Party of Pork

  John McCain sponsored a bill to cut all the pork out of the new budget plan.  Nine Republicans are voting against the amendement.  It’s no wonder.  Here is the list of the top 10 porky pigs in line at the trough, according to the watch group, Taxpayers for Common Sense.  14 out of the top 20 porkers who will receive porkly earmarks are Republicans.  Here’s the list of the nine Republicans that voted against McCain and for all the pork.  All of them are still slated to get big porky pieces of the spending pie:  Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Robert Bennett of Utah, Christopher Bond of Missouri, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Wait a second!  I thought the Republicans didn’t have time to even read the stimulus package?  They were hollering, “No, No, NO!” We can’t vote on this stimulus package!

Remember all the hullaballoo?  Well, I guess you don’t need to read the thing to get your porky projects inserted by a mega-lobby firm outfit called PMA Group being investigated and busted by the FBI just last November.  The obvious thing to do would be to take out all the questionable PMA Group pork, as was proposed by Republican, Tom Coburn(R-Okla).  But then, you’d have to guess again.  Coburn met as much resistance to this idea from his own party as he did from the Democrats.  From yesterday’s news:     

Just over an hour ago, by a vote of 43 to 52, the Senate rejected Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R, Okla.) amendment to eliminate the PMA earmarks from the Omnibus bill. Coburn’s statement explains the details:

“Instead of draining the swamp, Congress is protecting the polluters. The Senate could have removed 13 earmarks from this bill that are associated with the PMA Group, a K Street lobbying firm under investigation by the Justice Department over whether the firm made illegal campaign contributions to members of Congress who requested earmarks. Yet, the Senate decided to defend business as usual at the earmark favor factory. The American people want change now. They shouldn’t have to wait for further investigations, search warrants and possibly prosecutions to motivate us to restore the public’s trust in Congress.” 

Anyone who has seen Rush Limbaugh lately can see why the Republicans have got Rush as their perfect Mascot to go along with the “New Party” ideas.  The GOP’ers just cannot get enough of Fat, Bloated, Porky Programs!  Did they really think we wouldn’t notice all the useless spending they’ve inserted?  When will they get a clue that taxpayers and voters are fed up?

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