President Obama Says No More Earmarks! ...So, What'll We Call Them, Then?

Despite the campaign promise to end "earmarking," the long-accepted, perenially abused practice of adding pork to any and every spending bill by allowing each and every Congressman to add little line-item "and spend some money on my yokel friend Dwight, back home" spending projects, there isn't any end in sight.

President Obama says no more earmarking? NO PROBLEM.

We'll just call it something else, then, and then he can go to the public and say that Congress has stopped the practice of earmarking, without actually changing anything. 

This, of course, comes at a time when the Democrats are planning a huge spending bill, thinly disguised under the rubric of economic stimulus, despite the fact that it does no such thing. The Republicans are opposing it, in a kind of luke-warm way, and everyone seems to think that it's inevitable.

But what happens when - not if - it doesn't work?

Will we place the blame for the economic disaster that will result from doubling the national debt and building tons of huge, expensive public works projects, all the while raising taxes, in an already damaged economy, where it belongs?

Will we actually call the Democrats out for wasting their opportunity to turn things around - and reap the credit therefrom - or will we yet again allow them to dictate the narrative, and claim that no matter what goes wrong, it was the fault of the Bush administration?

These days, I really wonder. How stupid ARE we, as a nation, really? 

Are we really this fucking dumb, to let the Democrats do EXACTLY AND PRECISELY what they've been saying was wrong under the Bush Administration for eight years, and then pass blame for its failure off to President Bush?

If it was a failure then - and bailouts always are - it is and will be a failure now.

The way to repair the economy is to do away with this spending bill entirely, and instead cut tax rates enough to account for $825 billion, instead.

They won't do that; you and I know it.

And any other course will FAIL.

There won't be an economic turnaround here. And by the time we elect someone with the good sense to actually try tax cuts, the cuts required to repair things will have to be far more drastic than the Congress will actually allow.

It's sad we can't seem to elect anyone who passed a high school economics class.