Everytime he opens his yap, they get bigger:
Even though President Barack Obama has repeatedly pledged to ban congressional earmarks, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has 16 such projects, worth about $8.5 million, in the bill the Senate is scheduled to begin debating Tuesday.
The earmarks include funds for a Chicago planetarium and a Chicago suburb. Obama has been relentless in criticizing the use of earmarks; in his address to a joint session of Congress last week, he boasted how the economic stimulus package was “free of earmarks.”
By the end of this week, however, he’s likely to sign a separate $410 billion spending plan that keeps most domestic programs funded through Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year. It’s a plan that now contains about 9,000 earmarks.
You made me promises, promises. Via Moe Lane:
In 1988, Gregory Craig and William Lynn worked together as legislative assistants for Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Back then, Craig earned $37,375 a year and Lynn $23,734.
This year, President Obama appointed Craig as his White House counsel, a job which paid $172,200 a year during the Bush administration.
One of Craig’s first official acts as White House counsel was to recommend that Obama waive his ballyhooed rules against employing lobbyists in his administration so that Lynn, Craig’s old Senate colleague and a former registered lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon, could become the deputy secretary of defense at $177,000 a year under inherited pay scales.
So much for Obama’s vows during his presidential campaign to break up the old boy network in Washington and not bring lobbyists into his administration.
The contradiction between what Obama promised and what he did prompted Sen. John McCain of Arizona, his Republican rival for the presidency last year, to declare on the Senate floor during the brief debate on Lynn’s nomination: “It is disappointing that President Obama, who pledged continuously throughout the campaign to change the culture of Washington and the influence of lobbyists, then almost immediately chose to nominate several individuals, including Mr. Lynn, who required a waiver. Obviously, the American people were promised one thing but delivered another.”
McCain also decried Lynn’s lack of “any extensive managerial experience” to manage the biggest business in the world. Lynn is obviously no David Packard, the industrialist who ran Hewlett-Packard before serving as deputy Defense secretary to Melvin Laird from 1969 through 1971.
Moe has some related choice observations:
As I said, if this was some other country I’d be sympathetic to the Obama administration’s need to walk back from a campaign position that they simply cannot follow through on, and are just now realizing will be an issue that won’t go away in the Era of YouTube. However, this is my country, and I know darned well that they were baldfaced lying about this all along, so the President can either take the hit every time one of his cronies hires another lobbyist crony for a six-figure salary, or he can go on the air and admit that all of that bloviating about ending the influence of lobbyists in Washington was just “what we call pillow talk.â€
Hubris takes down the mightiest. And Obama is friggin dripping with it. We are less than 100 days of his presidency and already support is slipping. It is going to get uglier.
The interesting part is Obama shrewd enough, say like Bill Clinton was, to change course.
But it’s lucky for us that we have such a hard hitting attack dog in the Senate ready to tear into the President’s policies in such a vicious manner.
It wins for the Army of Darkness reference at the end.
I, for one, am simply shocked to find that our new prez is a lying sack o shit. Bein’ that he’s from Chicago and all, a city renowned for its open, honest, and fair politics.
Obama is just like Mugabe.
Just because Obama inherited the situation doesn’t mean he has to approve everything Bush wanted. If it has pet projects, get rid of them. We don’t need to waste any more money.
You’re kind of a nut, aren’t you, grammy?
The more I look at him the more I think he looks like Curious George. This man is a total fool.
The interesting part is Obama shrewd enough
I actually don’t think he is, Joe.
I think the man is a smooth-talking moron.
Bill Clinton, though sociopathic, is fundamentally a smart man.
Obama isn’t.
SBP, I gotta say, I think you’re right about that.
@ Joe’s “We are less than 100 days of his presidency and already support is slipping”
Huh?
“He is more popular than ever, Americans are hopeful about his leadership, and opposition Republicans are getting drubbed in public opinion, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests.” Fox News no less.
Hope that ‘when-reality-sucks-ignore-it’ thing works out for you.
Oh? You mean his job approval rating has finally topped 110%?
Mr. President Obama,
You vowed no pork and no ear marks would be accepted. Yet, you say you are not ready to prevent them in the stimulus bill …. why not? Because you say your appropriations machine is not yet in place …. but even I know you have the power of the veto.
So, if within the first 60 days you decide to fool me …. shame on you … but if I let you fool me again … shame on me …. but just so you are aware …. I for one will not trust anything you say from here on out …. because you are just another politician that thinks America is here to serve you.