Gutting the pork
December 19, 2006| By Nathaniel Ward
In what comes as good news for taxpayers and fiscal conservatives, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has pledged to eliminate 10,000 earmarks from the bills laying out this year’s budget. “In effect,” write Heritage budget analysts Brian Riedl and Ron Utt, “Pelosi intends to demonstrate that henceforth the budget of the United States government will be made in the United States Capitol, not in the offices of the several thousand lobbyists who have hijacked the process by selling earmarks to clients.”
In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bush rightly praised the Democratic leadership for its earmarks pledge. He also announced a new initiative to curtail pork-barrel spending: “My administration will soon lay out a series of reforms that will help make earmarks more transparent, that will hold the members who propose earmarks more accountable, and that will help reduce the number of earmarks inserted into large spending bills.” If enacted, these reforms could be a good start on the path to fiscal responsibility.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
