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Something GOP doesn't want to cut: Funding for NASCAR | McClatchy

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By Barbara Barrett - Feb. 25 (News) - McCollum said it doesn't make sense to keep the benefits for NASCAR teams and track owners when other cuts are being made to community health care, programs for homeless veterans and Head Start. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/02/25/109477/something-gop-doesnt-want-to-cut.html#ixzz1F1a7bZUQ McCollum said it doesn't make sense to keep the benefits for NASCAR teams and track owners when other cuts are being made to community health care, programs for homeless veterans and Head Start. "It's an earmark," she said. North Carolina Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry disagrees. His Charlotte-area district is home to half the NASCAR teams.

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State of the Union 2011: 'Win the future,' Obama says

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Anne E. Kornblut, Lori Montgomery - Jan. 26 (News Report) - Plan comes amid other signs the president is not going to embrace any of the controversial provisions laid out by his deficit commission.

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$1.1 trillion spending bill collapses as GOP senators yank support

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Hill - By Alexander Bolton - Dec. 17 (News) - Democrats will move to two high priorities on their legislative agenda: the DREAM Act and a repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell." Read more...

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West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd dead at 92

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Joe Holley - Jun. 28 (Special Report) - Mr. Byrd had been hospitalized last week with what was thought to be heat exhaustion, but more serious issues were discovered, aides said Sunday. No formal cause of death was given.

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House Democrat calls out Republicans for defying their party on earmark ban

Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Carol D. Leonnig - May. 15 (Investigative Report) - A top House Democrat has issued an ultimatum to Republicans with the potential for political sting: Withdraw earmarks seeking millions of taxpayer dollars for pet projects or be prepared to stand behind them.

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Health-care Bill: Looking for Votes washingtonpost.com

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Mar. 21 (Special Report) -

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The Dangerous New Politics of Pork Projects

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - By Daniel Stone - Feb. 12 (News Analysis) - But lately, bringing home pork has become as much of a political liability as an IRS audit. Since the 2008 election, Republicans, keen to tap populist anger from their fiscal-conservative base and constituencies such as tea-party activists, have presented out-of-control spending—and people like Murtha—as the problem in Washington. Polls suggest the strategy might be working.

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Mass appeal

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Economist - Jan. 20 (News Analysis) - It was a sign of how bad Democratic expectations were for the Senate race in Massachusetts that the knives were out even before the polls had closed. The election, in a state where Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans (and independents account for around half of the electorate), was held to replace Ted Kennedy, a Democratic stalwart who died last year. Mr Kennedy's last legislative priority had been to push for a health-care bill. Now Scott Brown, a Republican former model, will replace him, having won by a five-point margin. This gives the Republicans 41 seats in the Senate, enough for a filibuster to block legislation.

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Lawmakers challenged to read health care bill before voting

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Carrie Budoff Brown - Jul. 01 (News Report) - Let Freedom Ring, a group that promotes constitutional government and traditional values, has launched a campaign to get all 535 lawmakers in the House and Senate to pledge to not vote on the health care bill (likely to top 1,000 pages) until they have personally read it and the bill has been posted on the Internet for 72 hours.

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Obama Seeks Rules to Restrain Spending

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Lori Montgomery - Jun. 08 (News Report) - With the budget deficit soaring toward a record $1.8 trillion, the Obama administration is planning to propose tough new rules that would require lawmakers to pay for new initiatives -- including an overhaul of the health system -- or face automatic spending cuts.

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Murtha's Earmarks Keep Airport Aloft

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Carol D. Leonnig - Apr. 19 (Special Report) - The John Murtha airport sits on a windy mountain two hours east of Pittsburgh, a 650-acre expanse of smooth tarmac, spacious buildings, a helicopter hangar and a National Guard training center. Inside the terminal on a recent weekday, four passengers lined up to board a flight, outnumbered by seven security staff members and supervisors, all suited up in gloves and uniforms to screen six pieces of luggage. For three hours that day, no commercial or private planes took off or landed. Three commercial flights leave the airport on weekdays, all bound for Dulles International Airport.

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Pentagon's Unwanted Projects in Earmarks

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By R. Jeffrey Smith, Ellen Nakashima - Mar. 08 (News Report) - When President Obama promised Wednesday to attack defense spending that he considers wasteful and inefficient, he opened a fight with key lawmakers from his own party. It was Democrats who stuffed an estimated $524 million in defense earmarks that the Pentagon did not request into the 2008 appropriations bill, about $220 million more than Republicans did, according to an independent estimate. Of the 44 senators who implored Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in January to build more F-22 Raptors -- a fighter conceived during the Cold War that senior Pentagon officials say is not suited to probable 21st-century conflicts -- most were Democrats.

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Despite reforms, Congress hides $3.5B in defense earmarks

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By David Heath, Christine Willmsen - Oct. 12 (Investigative Report) - time after time, Congress exploited loopholes or violated those rules, a Seattle Times investigation has found. An in-depth examination of the 2008 defense bill found $8.5 billion in earmarks. Of those, 40 percent — $3.5 billion — were hidden. And Congress broke its pledge — and President Bush's challenge — to cut earmarks in half.

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The State of Sarah Palin

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Philip Gourevitch - Sep. 19 (Special Report) - Many Alaskans enjoy being disconnected from the Lower Forty-eight, which is sometimes referred to as if it were a foreign country. There is pride in this sense of apartness, and that pride has been stung repeatedly since 2006, when the F.B.I. began raiding state lawmakers' offices in an ever-expanding anti-corruption campaign. There have been indictments and guilty pleas. Oil-industry executives who were caught on videotape in the Baranof Hotel, in Juneau, the state capital, giving cash handouts to a state legislator have coï¿½perated in pointing out other state legislators who liked to get paid before voting on oil-industry tax rates.

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McCain and Palin castigate the earmarks she seeks

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Jennifer Loven - Sep. 11 (News Report) - Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, equated lawmakers' requests for funding for special projects with corruption on Wednesday even though Palin herself has requested nearly $200 million in so-called "earmarks" this year.

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Record Contradicts Palin's 'Bridge' Claims

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Elizabeth Holmes, Laura Meckler - Sep. 09 (News Report) - Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government "thanks but no thanks" to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.

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Earmark Spending Makes a Comeback

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Robert O'Harrow Jr. - Jun. 13 (News Report) - More than a year after Congress pledged to curb pork barrel funding known as earmarks, lawmakers are gearing up for another spending binge, directing billions toward organizations and companies in their home districts.

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Candidates' Earmarks Worth Millions

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Paul Kane - Feb. 14 (News Report) - Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, Clinton supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed.

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Republicans, Democrats jockey on earmark reform

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - By G. R. Chaddock - Feb. 12 (News Report) - Delivering the bacon to constituents back home used to be a net gain for politicians, but it's emerging as a key theme in campaign ads that attack incumbents for waste or corruption. Now, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are grappling with how far to push curbs on the practice in the spending cycle for fiscal year 2009 and beyond.

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Economic compromise cuts parties' pet proposals

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

USA Today - By Richard Wolf, Ken Dilanian - Jan. 25 (News Report) - The Bush administration and House leaders agreed Thursday on $150 billion in temporary tax breaks for individuals and businesses that they hope will jump-start an ailing economy. Moving quickly to help avert more stock market losses such as those that unnerved investors last week, Democrats and Republicans scuttled some of their favorite proposals in favor of a pared-down fiscal stimulus package.

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Spending Bills Still Stuffed With Earmarks

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 07:50:04 -0800

Washington Post - By Elizabeth Williamson - Dec. 21 (News Report) - The $555 billion annual "omnibus" spending bill approved by Congress this week and the $459 billion defense bill passed last month collectively contain more than 11,000 earmarks, despite Democrats' vow to use their first year in the majority to slash the number of such pet projects.

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Hoyer Is Proof of Earmarks' Endurance

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:38:36 -0800

Washington Post - By Mary Beth Sheridan - Dec. 10 (Special Report) - Even as House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer has joined in steps to clean up pork-barrel spending, the Maryland congressman has tucked $96 million worth of pet projects into next year's federal budget, including $450,000 for a campaign donor's foundation.

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Not All Those Vetoed Earmarks Came From Democrats

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 09:59:25 -0800

Washington Post - By Mary Ann Akers, Paul Kane - Nov. 22 (News Report) - Conventional wisdom has it that Thanksgiving is the best of all American holidays. As a contrarian, I'd like to put that wisdom to the test. Thanksgiving does have the absence of the heavy hand of dreary gift giving that has put the groans in Christmas, the moans in Hanukkah. And no one has written treacly Thanksgiving songs, comparable to "White Christmas" and "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire," which, I suspect, have helped make Christmas one of the prime seasons for suicide. Let us not speak of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," of whose travail we shall all have heard more than our fill as we ride up elevators and pass along the aisles of department stores.

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Earmarks Now Everybody's Business

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:43:07 -0800

Washington Post - By Elizabeth Williamson - Nov. 14 (News Report) - Created by two prominent watchdog groups, the Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense, the earmark site "walks people through the steps involved in who's behind an earmark and why, and it calls the public into the actual project research," said Steve Ellis, vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense.

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'I'll Sell My Soul to the Devil'

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:32:09 -0800

Washington Post - By Karl Vick - Nov. 12 (News Report) - When the FBI came looking for corruption in Alaska politics, it found an excellent perch in Suite 604 of the Baranof Hotel in Juneau, the state capital. There, a profane septuagenarian named Bill Allen did business throughout a 2006 special session called to set taxes on the oil industry. With hundred-dollar bills in his front pocket for ease of access when lawmakers turned up with their hands out, the oil-services company executive turned in a bravura performance before the pinhole camera that federal agents installed opposite his favorite chair.

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