Sadly most politicians use anything and everything for personal gain, so it’s really no surprise for Kay Bailey Hutchinson or most politicians to flip flop on earmarking. In recent news Hutchinson made a complete flip on her stance on earmarks, and as of currently she is opposed to it. In my opinion earmarking is never a good thing, just last year on a single bill, the omnibus spending bill, that Obama signed totaling $410 billion, $8.2 billion was spent elsewhere due to 9,000 earmarks added to the bill. In order for a democracy to function properly the people need to be able to have an open and apparent process of law making, yet earmarks seem to go against this basic rule. These so called pork barrel projects use federal money and allocate the money to local spending. Earmarks are a gateway drug to corruption. In a perfect world there is nothing wrong with earmarking but when there are corrupt and self serving individuals doing the earmarking it does more harm than good. To further prove my point, Democratic Representative Jim Oberstar said that earmarks are a way to get money to people who need it when "the state isn't doing its job." How is it okay to ignore the stases obvious problem of “not doing its job” by taking money away from its intended purpose? This article does a good job of pointing out how Hutchison and dare I say Perry are jumping on the band wagon…”come on everyone is doing it.” Luckily for us the band wagon is headed in the right direction.
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