“If this isn’t an earmark, I don’t know what is.”
Last night Eric Cantor spoke on the floor in objection to a single “backroom deal” provision stuck into the Farm bill that only benefits a wealthy few. This $200 million EARMARK was so narrowly crafted that the bonds authorized in it can only be used for ONE piece of land mostly in Montana, and only by ONE wealthy land owner, timber giant Plum Creek. Under the provision, the Nature Conservancy would be allowed to issue $500 million in bonds and then use the proceeds to purchase the land from Plum Creek. This transaction will cost taxpayers $200 million dollars.
Eric brought up the serious flaws of this provision by highlighting the state of our economy. He asked, “What in the world are we doing here contemplating the expenditure of $200 million in U.S. taxpayer money to fund the purchase of a single tract of land that benefits just one wealthy landowner, all the while American families are struggling with skyrocketing gas prices, food prices through the roof, plummeting home prices, and an economy that is barely growing?”
This $200 million earmark is exactly what’s wrong with Washington and why the American people are screaming for change. It is time for the Federal Government to start working for the American people again.
May 16th, 2008 at 8:54 am I know that you take heat whenever you vote against someone’s pet bill. I know you didn’t vote for the “New GI Bill” that Jim Webb has been championing. Here is why I would not have voted for it either:
I worked for Jim Webb when he was SECNAV, but had I been in Congress, I would not have voted for his GI Bill.
I wrote to him and talked with his staff in advance of this Bill going to Committee. I pointed out that our military personnel, when they volunteer to join, do not sign up for a particular war, or join only for times of peace. They volunteer to serve, no matter what happens.
Given that we are supposed to all be equal under the law, why then would anyone promote a bill, including a GI Bill that treats the veterans of one era, differently than those who served in other eras?
What we should have is a GI Bill that is uniform all across the various political eras, and as changes are made, those changes must apply to all veterans, much like Social Security or other group compensation or medical programs.
To be specific, veterans who joined just at the end of the Vietnam era got no education benefits at all. There was a lousy pay-in program that wouldn’t fund a semester at most colleges. This program is known as VEAP and it manifested the contempt America felt toward the military during the post-Vietnam years. Later, when the “Montgomery GI Bill” was ushered in, those benefits of that program were not “grandfathered” to the VEAP veterans, unless the soldier had been foolish enough to invest in the patently bad VEAP accounts. As a consequence of having different programs for different eras of enlistment, we have soldiers who serve alongside one another where some have a good benefits package, while others have a lesser one and in the case of the VEAP era, no benefits at all.
No union, not even the federal government has workers in the same jobs, expected to work alongside others with wholly different benefits packages.
Jim Webb has at least made a try to help the Vets, but we need to have a GI Bill that applies uniformly to all veterans, regardless of the era in which they served. They didn’t pick their war, so we should not reward or punish them based on what happened during their eras of service to our country.
May 19th, 2008 at 12:19 pm Representative Cantor- Thank you for standing up against the Farm Bill. Are there no Republicans left with any backbone. Does the Republican Leadership not get it. They had a bloodbath in 2006, and now are headed for a massacre in 2008. CONSERVATISM works every time it’s tried!