One of my favorite dudes is Tom Delay. Very religious by all accounts. Certainly a man of moral majority values. Apple pie and all that stuff.
Four paragraphs from:
washingtonpost.com
In pushing his tax cut, Bush had no stronger ally than Rep. Tom DeLay, the sharp-tongued majority whip from Sugar Land, Tex. "Republicans want you to keep more of your hard-earned money," DeLay told reporters on May 3. "The Democratic leadership wants to take away more of what you earn to pay for their big-government spending."
Last year, however, DeLay steered $2 million in federal funds to Sugar Land Airport, a center for corporate jets near Houston that is in the midst of a major expansion. More recently, according to House staff, he made sure the airport was included on a list of "priority" projects in the annual transportation spending bill passed by the House last week.
and
According to figures compiled by congressional staff, House members have requested 18,898 "earmarks" -- targeted expenditures for home-district projects such as highways, dams, parks and museums -- in the spending bills making their way through Congress. If all were approved, the cost would amount to $279 billion -- almost the size of the Pentagon's annual budget.
But as the number of earmarks has increased sharply in recent years, rising more than threefold since Republicans won control of Congress in 1995, some say the practice has spun out of control.
No doubt at all that Delay will be out there pumping the ol' Tax and Spend rhetoric while the GOP controlled house has triple the earmarks to the tune of matching the entire Defense Appropriations Bill. There's also no doubt that the conservative base will be lapping up all of the rhetoric along with it.
jttmab |
