DeMint: “I’d love a Presidential Veto”
[Tim Cameron]
Sen. Jim DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn held a blogger’s conference call today to discuss earmark reform. As most of you already know, Sen. DeMint has been leading the fight to create transparency in the earmarking process in our federal budget. Basically DeMint wants any member requested earmarks to have that member’s name and any potential conflicts of interest to be readily identifiable with the earmark they requested.
Really is that to much to ask?
I was expecting to see the Democrats in the Senate vote against including DeMint’s amendment in the bill. What shocked me was seeing the some of the Republican Senate leadership voting against DeMint’s proposal, most notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted with the Democrats on this bill.
“Unfortunately with the name ‘ethics’ on bill many of my colleagues felt they couldn’t vote against it,” said Sen. DeMint. “I keep trying to look for a silver lining, but the fact a lot of our leadership broke against this troubles me.”
Were do we go from here?
“American people now get to find out that the wool been totally pulled over their eyes. The more people who know about this, the more they will start getting discussed with what is going on…Over the long run the American people are going to win,” said Sen. Coburn
And there is still hope. The ethics reform bill, which contains a watered down version of earmark reform, still needs the President’s approval.
“I’d love a Presidential veto; the problem is I don’t know if we have enough votes to sustain it. It seems everybody is thinking of this as a 30 second commercial for or against them,” said Sen. DeMint.
One interesting twist on this debate was brought up by a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. He raised the idea that most earmarks normally go to new projects, and often overlook maintenance projects because every elected official loves a ribbon cutting. He then brought up the point that the I-35 Bridge in Minnesota had twice been cited by federal officials as being deficient.
DeMint did not know if earmarking was the reason this bridge did not receive the type repairs that would have prevented this type of tragedy, but he did know that road maintenance often falls victim to brand new projects. DeMint said that by passing earmark reform, we would better be able to allow the states to prioritize the projects they need rather than some bureaucrat in Washington wants.