During his campaign for the Presidency, Barack Obama made it a point to stay away from lobbyists and made a promise to at least limit earmark spending in Washington. As he began the push to get his economic stimulus package through Congress, he declared it would have no earmark spending. It appears that despite his efforts, the package will have earmarks in it after all. I certainly don’t blame President Obama for this, but even with his call for a new way of doing our country’s business, it looks like Washington hasn’t changed much after all.

As the package works it’s way through Congress, special interest groups and lobbyists are doing their best to circumvent the process and get all the money they can pointed in their direction. The only thing that seems to have changed is how they are working the deals. The process is getting more secretive and it is going to be harder for the public to know how their money is being spent. From The Associated Press:

President Barack Obama’s ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn’t mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won’t be able to funnel money to pet projects.They’re just working around it – and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.

The projects run the gamut: a Metrolink station that needs building in Placentia, Calif.; a stretch of beach in Sandy Hook, N.J., that could really use some more sand; a water park in Miami.

There are thousands of projects like those that once would have been gotten money upfront but now are left to scramble for dollars at the back end of the process as “ready to go” jobs eligible for the stimulus plan.

The result, as The Associated Press learned in interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and state and local officials, is a shadowy lobbying effort that may make it difficult to discern how hundreds of billions in federal money will be parceled out.

From the way some of these people are talking, there was never any doubt the earmarks would be in the bill, it was just a matter of where they would get inserted. Does any of this sound familiar? It was reported earlier that much of the original $700 billion bailout of Wall Street was unaccounted for, ie. no one was willing to tell us how it was being spent. It may be even harder to find out where this $825 billion economic stimulus package will be spent. That decision is being made behind closed doors, with no paper trail.

I was against the original $700 billion bailout and even though I do think something has to be done to help our economy, I am beginning to doubt, more and more, the effectiveness of the upcoming stimulus package. The package is starting to sound like one big “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” party. Maybe whoever came up with the nickname “The Favor Factory” for Congress wasn’t so far off. The only people who don’t seem to be getting any favors is the American taxpayers. As it usually is, we are getting the short end of the stick.

Tags: $700 Billion, Congress, Economic Stimulus Package, Lobbyist, President Obama

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 9:24 pm and is filed under News/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.