Political Quotes

“Madam President, what we have here is a pork fest of epic proportions. You can't imagine how much pork barrel spending is going on in this bill, but you should know about it. There are 6,000 earmarks in this bill. What is an earmark? An earmark is where a Congressman or Senator says: Hey, I have this special interest--maybe they are a donor; maybe they are somebody important in their area; maybe they are a relative-- and they want to name Bubba Gump Shrimp Museum after them or they want to name some kind of museum after one of their donors, and that is what gets put into these bills and bloats them beyond imagination. It is also sort of the grease that eases in billions and trillions of other dollars, because you get people to buy into the total package by giving them a little bit of pork for their town, a little bit of pork for their donors. Porkbarrel spending elicits the images of politicos with hands and fists stuffed with dollars, passing these out to the special interests. And that is exactly what it is. In 2010, 2009, there was this Tea Party uprising. There were people concerned that their government had gone beyond its constitutional limits and had begun spending money like there was no tomorrow, and that the debt was rising at an extraordinary pace. People came to Washington, and one of the things Republicans vowed to do was be better. We voted within our conference to ban earmarks.…”