Pigs in the Blanket

President Barack Obama stated that he was signing an “imperfect bill”. This imperfect bill was loaded with ‘earmarks’, a practice that President Obama was indubitably against during his campaign for the President of the United States. Just two months ago President Obama said, "We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review," after a meeting with his economic advisers (1). Obviously the President either didn’t care about the ‘pet projects’ that were being inserted or felt that the major economic deficiencies we were facing needed to be acted upon instantly, and overshadowed the massive amounts of ‘earmarks’. The American economy is most certainly in a horrendous condition, and the reasoning behind President Obama allowing this imperfect bill to be instituted. However, some of these pet projects are outlandish and highly detrimental to a bill that should help and not hinder the American economy. Our debt is increasing to the tune of $3.27 billion a day since September 28th 2008, and as of March 15th 2009 we have a national debt of $10.99 Trillion (2). These ‘earmarks’ only add to the debt of our nation, they include “a $200,000 allocated to the task of tattoo removal as Representative Howard Berman of California wanted. Not to forget the stimulus bill pork spending - almost $2 million for swine odor and manure management for Tom Harkin because it is highly urgent to treat the stink of pigs and their manure.” (3). In addition to these other ‘projects’ “$1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research; Another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.” (4). As you can see there is an immense amount of pork spending within this bill. All in all the ‘earmarks’ out weigh what this stimulus package will do for our economy.

Source 1
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/06/obama.stimulus/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
Source 2
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Source 3
http://www.8000credit.org/150/
Source 4
http://www.erollover.com/blog/2009-economy/2009-economic-stimulus-bill

Chris Cacio
Period 6
L4 Civics