February 27, 2008

The King and Queen of Pork Earmarks

A nice article at The Examiner about a dinner that John and Joyce Murtha are holding in Washington:
Editorial: Oink! Oink! Murtha�s porkfest
Rep. John Murtha is hosting a gala dinner tonight at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City for defense industry lobbyists who have received and who hope to receive millions of tax dollars via earmarks sponsored by the Pennsylvania Democrat.

Murtha is one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi�s closest allies and one of the leading earmarkers in Congress. Tickets for the �Evening with Jack and Joyce Murtha� dinner cost $1,500 per person. Murtha and cohorts like Rep. James Moran, D-Va., and Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., have refined the earmark-for-a-contribution process to a fine art. A Roll Call investigation last year found, with assistance from Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Sunlight Foundation, that the three Democrats funneled millions of dollars in earmarks for firms whose executives then contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their re-election campaigns.

But Murtha�s porkfest is not going unnoticed. Three conservative citizen activist groups and a conservative blog that are active in the anti-earmark Porkbusters movement are gathering protesters, posters and pigs and plan to crash the Murtha pork bash.

RedState.com is the blog that put out the original call for protests. The responding groups are Americans for Prosperity, Citizens Against Government Waste and the National Taxpayers Union.
Cool that there is a demonstration. I hope that someone is taking photos of the people attending this "gala" -- I love the line:
the three Democrats funneled millions of dollars in earmarks for firms whose executives then contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their re-election campaigns
I recently read a book about a proposed FairTax which replaces the IRS and the Employment tax with a flat 23% tax on goods and services sold in the USA. If you buy a house that has been built for you, you will be paying that tax. If you buy a used house, you will not. Same thing with cars and other durable goods. The authors of the book pointed out that one side-effect of this would be to open up the earmarking process and shine some light on it since Congress and the House would not be able to have direct control over the funds generated by the FairTax. The 23% was chosen as it is the embedded tax in anything sold in the USA these days. If you buy a loaf of bread, the tractor maker paid tax on the steel they bought and passed it on to the farmer who paid taxes and passed them on to the miller who passed them on to the baker, the distributor, the store and finally to you. All of these add up to about 23%. Posted by DaveH at February 27, 2008 8:35 PM
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