“By balancing the budget through pro-growth economic policies and spending restraint, we are better positioned to tackle the longer term fiscal challenge facing our country: reforming entitlements--Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--so future generations can benefit from these vital programs without bankrupting our country.
One important message I took away from the election is that people want to end the secretive process by which Washington insiders are able to slip into legislation billions of dollars of pork-barrel projects that have never been reviewed or voted on by Congress… It's time Congress give the president a line-item veto. And today I will announce my own proposal to end this dead-of-the-night process and substantially cut the earmarks passed each year.”
Democrats have vowed to reform the earmark process, but they have also vowed, as Nancy Pelosi put it, to have "the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history." So far, if the treatment of incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, who does not appear to be paying any political price for his ethics problems, is any indication, that vow is not holding up so well. On the bright side, for Republicans anyway, failure of Democrats to work with the President on issues voters want to see addressed could help assure that they don’t stay in the majority long.