I was on MSNBC last week trying to make this point, but I don’t think I made it as well as Ron Paul does — it’s easy to pick out salacious-sounding "earmarks" and harumph around in the press like you’re the pig that just found a giant truffle, but it really just obscures a much larger problem:
RON PAUL
Republican representative from Texas; candidate for president in 2008
To fight earmarks is to fight for an even more powerful executive branch. It is popular these days to condemn earmarks in the name of fiscal conservatism. The truth is that they account for less than 2 percent of the spending bill just passed. And even if all earmarks were removed from the budget overall, no money would be saved. That money would instead go to the executive branch to spend as it sees fit. Congress has the power of the purse. It is the constitutional responsibility of members to earmark, or designate, where funds should go, rather than to simply deliver a lump sum to the president.
Earmarks actually provide a level of transparency and accountability to federal spending. Consider the $350 billion that was recently given to the Treasury Department for the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The Treasury has not been forthcoming about where much of that ended up. If every bit of it had been earmarked, at least we would know something about how it was spent.
Instead of fighting earmarks, we should empower Congress to audit the Federal Reserve, which creates and spends trillions of dollars without any real transparency or accountability.
There are a lot points of agreement between liberals and conservatives who want to pull the fulcrum of power closer to the grassroots and away from entrenched DC self-interest of the establishment. I was on Break the Matrix the other night talking with Rick Williams about how Accountability Now is looking to recruit Ron Paul Republicans to run primary challenges against corporatist Republicans, and you can hear it here.
While there are certainly going to be points of contention between libertarian Republicans and progressive Democrats, there are also areas of strong agreement — especially right now. As Rick says, the talking points of FDL’s No More Dough Til We Know Where It Goes campaign could have come off their own website. I always feel like I’m in an honest discussion with them that is symptomatic of a healthy democratic process. We’re talking about sincere disagreements on a mutually agreed upon playing field, with the shared goal of wanting to create a system that better serves the public interest.
I contrast that with the completely dishonest conversation we’re dragged into on a daily basis with people like Ellen Tauscher. She comes in and tries to kill cramdown on behalf of bank lobbyists, says she’s never talked to one even though she’s got one working out of her office, tries to pretend she’s acting out of concern for the little people, backs down when people call up her office in pure rage, and then claims victory — as if what happened is all she ever wanted. It’s utter kabuki that isn’t honest about motive, tactics, or reality. It’s pure self-interest with about five minutes of lazy, wink-wink nudge-nudge effort put into dressing it up as populism (aided by lazy journalists who don’t look too deeply, and will print anything some congressional PR flack tells them).
You can’t have a conversation with that, all you can do is try to drag it into the light and expose it for what it is.
Anyway, good for Ron Paul. I totally agree with him on this one.
Don’t forget to sign the petition: No More Dough Til We Know Where It Goes. We’ll be delivering your comments to Congress soon.
Related posts:
- Hamsher on Shuster: A Call for More Transparency
- Doug Hoffman’s Cunning Plan to Reduce the Deficit: Cutting Earmarks, Taxes
- Barney Frank: Committee to Hold Hearings on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act
- FDL Statement on the Committee Passage of H.R. 1207, the Paul-Grayson Bill to Audit the Fed
- Blue Dogs and Republicans Agree: No Health Care Vote Before Recess
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I read that Topic A piece at the WaPo0 this morning. Paul was probably the most honest person the Po0 asked about Earmarks.
Most Obama voters scorned Ron Paul, from what I could see.
IMO, Paul would have made a much, much better president.
I’m really glad to see you post this, Jane. Ron Paul took some pretty harsh words from FDLer’s during the campaign, mostly the sense was along the lines that he was just totally cracked.
I like Paul and many of his ideas make sense on the grassroots level.
Sure would be great to have him here at the Lake sometime. And he’s dead on in his take of this issue.
Thanks for this!
I signed and sent out to my lists this petition when it first came out.
Like Paul’s positions on other issues or not, he IS consistent, has a dynamic background in economics and deserves to be heard in this discussion. oh! and he always says the same thing. he doesn’t deviate, obstruct or obfuscate on any of his positions, ever, that I’ve ever seen. Right or wrong, right or left, he’s honest, and that is a total rarity from anyone in the village!
We never should have allowed John McCain to drive us into the “Bridge to Nowhere” camp. Playing on the field that assumes government does stupid things isn’t progressive, and it devalues government’s contribution to the commons. We need to de-couple contributions from earmarks, but earmarks are often inserted by legislators who understand local needs much better than bureaucrats in Washington.
Besides, the Bridge to Nowhere didn’t go “nowhere” — it connected Ketchikan to its own airport.
would very much like to have him on to talk transparency, too
Ron Paul and (choke) Bob Barr were better by a mile than any major candidate of either party on civil liberties.
TWEET!
Foul.
I’m sort of busy right now and have no time to research old Ron Paul tapes, but one which occurs to me happened in an interview Dr Paul gave to Tim Russert last year in which the late newscaster nailed him for taking earmarks for his Galveston constituency although he had roundly condemned the practice. Ron Paul had no much of an answer, but I came up with one for him next time.
See, imagine Mr Williams of the dry goods firm Smith-Moore-Williams riding in a stagecoach held up by Quantrill and his Raiders, circa 1870. Mr Williams advises Mr Frank James, according to local legend, that when they approach the border with the Territory, they’ll be needing supplies, and Smith-Moore-Williams has them aplenty! Be careful not to cause any trouble, now; the Yankees are there in force, and, let’s be Frank, you really don’t want to shoot with them.
So, Mr Williams is opposed to stage robbery, yes. So, Mr Williams is in favor of recoverying whatever has been stolen as he is able.
Another way of looking at it would be to regard the “victims” of Madoff. They are poor pitiful little lambies today, but they may have been living for twenty years off what was stolen from the less fortunate. Call it a Sheriff of Nottingham solution.
Or maybe it’s all the fault of too much caffeine on a lazy Saturday.
digg is open
Thanks Jane!
Jane, imho, this is another in a long line of your great posts about strange bedfellows. IMHO, the fastest growing block of Americans are those who are disillusioned with the incumbent-protection rackets. The only way to break their stranglehold is for you to forge these kinds of relationships.
icymi, Wall Street Journal hammered Maxine Waters. Here is her response in the LA Times.
Rep. Maxine Waters defends her work for minority-owned banks
As a consequence of her terrific help for Ned, I am a big fan of hers. I was not particularly surprised by this, when you swim with slime, it’s hard to stay clean.
I’ve been saying for years that we don’t just need better Democrats, we need better Republicans, too. Early in 2008, Glenn Greenwald put together a list of bills that were either horrible for civil liberties or stupid war policy. On each, the Republicans in Congress were nearly unanimous, while the Democrats were split. On issues like those, there should have been disagreement among Republicans, too. Yet there was none.
Liberals aren’t the only ones who believe in freedom, and it would be refreshing to see that there are Republican politicians who understand the concept, too.
As for earmarks, Fact Check seems to agree with Ron Paul, which I must admit is news to me. Just goes to show how ridiculous our public discourse on politics has become.
The us against them attitude is ruining this country .
It’s good to get input from folks with different opinions
dugg!
&
dugg!
&
DUGG!
what’s really good is to be able to have an honest and relevant and BASED IN REALITY debate or discussion with a republican who’s not OD’d on a daily dose of bs.
Dugg !
Ron Paul has many ideas I agree with
The idea that earmarks are bad is just fodder for the sound bite addicted MSM ,earmarks are how our elected officials bring money home to their districts
It’s what we elected them to do !
Jane, the next “Toxic Assets of Mass Destruction Bail-Out” are really the bankruptcy of America, please check into it and stop them !
To the Administration and Congress:
Just start moving all the “Toxic Assets” to a Federal Special Bank, no need to pay anyone to do this basic initial move.
In my opinion, President Obama,Vice-President Biden and Congress can right now put all the toxic assets from every financial institution in a Special Federal Holding Bank supervised by Congress and the White House – where in 2 to 3 years they will be very valuable while collecting some income and may be re-purchased again by these same banks later – and just without these toxic-assets in their books the stock of all these Institutions will go up 15 to 30 % in weeks, just the Legislation action will make the bankers and investors see with confidence ,with clarity and there will be no need to pay anyone, including the Hedge-Funds that got us into this financial mess ,any money, because just getting the Banks to download that “Toxic Financial Waste” is worth 2 trillion dollars for these Institutions, why pay them too ? the Banks can get the market value and some interest from their books losses.
And because if the Obama-Biden Adm. gives the money away ,the day after,the Media ( the same Media controlled by these same Hedge-Funds ) will blame the Obama-Biden Administration of incompetence and corruption for giving the Hedge-Funds a 2 trillion dollar gift for “nothing”, so I urge President Obama,VP.Biden and Congress to first pass those assets to a Federal Special Bank, and then see how the market value of these Institutions goes up day by day, there is no need to give more money to the Hedge-Funds, but of course the Geithner-Bernanke-Summers-Orszag-Shapiro-Shumer group is only interested in getting another shot of USA Taxpayers money to the Hedge-Funds in their organized group , which is bankrupt : with A.I.G. , Bear Stearns, Lehman , Merrill and Madoff out of the play and the War contracts winding down , they are a bit down too , right ? enough is enough !
I don’t like the fact that they’re not reviewed before the bills are voted on, and I don’t like that they are a way for the congressional leadership to dole out favors, but they don’t add to the budget, and that’s the implication we keep hearing. There are probably better ways to do the same thing, but they’re not making much difference in a budget. All they do is limit what the President can do with the money, which isn’t a bad thing in itself.
my problem isn’t with those of Rep. Paul’s ideas that I agree with, its with his core, no-government-is-good-government philosophy – in other words, the vast majority of his ideas that strike me as downright wingnutty. Sorry, I don’t want any Ron Paul indigestion.
I agree with some of the libertarian message. To the extent that “small government” means “Keep your fuckin govt. out of the sex and smoking habits of Americans”- I applaud them. To the extent that they deplore the religiousfornification of govt.- I join them. To the extent that they hate sending money to Washington that gets wasted on projects to pad the pocketbooks of fat cat political contributors, I embrace them.
They err, in my opinion, in ignoring the important things that govt. can and must do well…to that extent they are living in a fantasyland of their own invention. Still- I like em.
It’s not that simple.
Guess what got lost in the loan pool
Ofcourse the white-collar thugs, who bought the CDS’ and worthless securities want to give it to the taxpayers without paying back the losses.
In three, or five, or ten years, they will only buy back the stuff that is worth something.
Why leave the white-collar thugs, who engineered this disaster in control of what’s left of the banks?
do
Book Salon upstairs with Russ Baker and his Family of Secrets, The Bush Dynasty… hosted by Emptywheel
Ron Paul has some ideas that coincide with those of liberal Democrats. But his basic viewpoint is hard-line rightwing isolationist – the kind of Old Right isolationism that is just the flip side of nationalist unilateralism. He agrees with the John Birch Society much more than with liberal Democrats.
He’s also been one of the main players in “mainstreaming” themes of the “patriot militia” and white supremicist/nativist groups into the mainstream of the Republican Party.
So even when I find myself agreeing with him on an individual point, I still see him as a seriously bad influence in American politics.
Agree.
FWIW, ending slavery required that the vast majority of the Union Army be composed of men who were white supremacists. They strongly believed in segregation, but they opposed some states allowing slavery.
I think there’s a way to get Paulite Republicans to agree with universal healthcare… it will be tough, but “Promote the general welfare” from the preamble should resonate with them. And the spectacular failures of profit driven health insurance and medical delivery… it should be possible to push a common good/general welfare argument that says regulatory policy created a failed system, and we need to have a system that delivers health care to all Americans without over reliance on emergency rooms.
There are, on the other hand, some problems with earmarks. They can be corrupt — groups who make campaign contributions are likely to be found at the head of the earmark queue. And the possibility of earmarks has come to mean that states and units of local government feel that they have to employ lobbyists to try to get the earmark. The earmark itself may be a good expenditure of public money, but I have some problem with the notion that the first step in getting the sewer system upgrade that the town needs is to use public money to pay a lobbyist.
I too want agreement where possible, but here you are barking up a wrong tree. Dr. Paul does not even accept medicare or medicaid in his private praactice. Whatever you may say about the man he is conistent in his belief system. He would however be one we could work with on issues we share common ground, but will probably never surrender on others (no harm in asking however).
I agree that Ron Paul is in some ways better than Ellen Tauscher. For me this illustrates a long-held goal: breaking up the duopoly. If we can help split libertarians away from militarists and religious nuts, breaking up the Republican party, then we should look forward to a Progressive party that is able to dump the corporatists. A 4-party system would suit me fine.
good article, well done
good post
Ron Paul vs Tim Russert: I saw that interview you mention and the question Russert asked was disingenuous. Russert well knew that earmarks do not increase the spending of a bill, but he was counting on the ignorance of his viewers.
Russert’s question stemmed from Paul voting “no” (aka Dr. No) on so many bills and Russert was pretending it was hypocritical of Paul to then claim earmarks. Paul countered that even though he voted “no”, if the bill passed, why not give his constituents back some of their very own money? Funds are going to be spent and since earmarks do not add to a bill’s funding (which of course Russert knew) why not bring it back to the people?
I thought Paul’s answer was great, especially beginning with the, “Oh, come on now Tim….” — emphasizing the false “gotcha” Russert was trying to play.