Quote:
Originally Posted by MattLarson
What else can a President do? The President cannot change the House or Senate rules to eliminate earmarks. The only power the President has is the veto.
Which, as you point out, will make a mess of things.
But then again, things are already a mess.
Matt
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Maybe he could propose real reform instead of announce that he's going to initiate the biggest pissing match of all time with congress.
Earmarks contain some unnecessary spending and some essential spending. You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
A constructive solution to earmarks: just off the top of my head would be to create a separate legislative channel/designation for them. Instead of being tacked on to unrelated legislation, the earmarks could be evaluated on their own merit and packaged together with like expenditures... then put to vote.
Yes, the POTUS has veto power, but announcing to use it procedurally is an abuse of that power IMO. If John McCain would champion and sponsor a bipartisan effort to pass legislative reform and push it publicly it would place much more pressure on congress to get it done than would compiling a weekly "Most Wanted" list for the biggest requesters of earmarks.
It's a simplistic, combative, and destructive way to approach the issue. It's not solving the problem... it would make it worse. Legislators have legitimate earmarks to pass. They're not all frivolous.... What's broken about their passage is the process... not the entirety of their content.