Paul Ryan: “as the gentleman from Texas mentioned, we are not saying all earmarks are bad. Some of them are worthy. Some of them are…”

“as the gentleman from Texas mentioned, we are not saying all earmarks are bad. Some of them are worthy. Some of them are vetted. Some of them fit within the proper role of the Federal Government. But a lot of them are bad. A lot of them are wasteful. A lot of them probably go outside of what most people think is the proper role of the Federal Government. The point is we don't have all the answers on how to make it work right. That's why we think we ought to have a commission of an equal number of Democrats, an equal number of Republicans, the Kingston-Wolf Commission is what everybody calls it, to figure out how to make these things work right so that Congress can regain the trust and confidence of the American people. But in the meantime, let's say ``no'' to these earmarks for a year. Let's do a moratorium. That's what we do. Do you know what we can accomplish by actually having a moratorium of earmarks for 1 year? By banking those savings, by saying ``no'' to earmarks for a year and carrying those savings in our budget, we can make sure that we're not going to cut the child tax credit in half; that we are not going to tax people for being married. We can make permanent the $1,000 per-child tax credit, the repeal of the marriage tax penalty. Let me just read along this list of earmarks that we have: an ode to Tom Daschle, a nice guy, former Senate majority leader, a $1 million earmark to create a center for Tom Daschle in South Dakota.…”