I received this press release from Lynn Westmoreland’s office:

U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland announced today that he will not pursue earmarks in this year’s budget process as part of his fight to overhaul what he considers Congress’ wasteful pork-barrel spending. Westmoreland’s earmark moratorium will be in effect until the process is reformed, and taxpayers have more confidence that their money is spent wisely, he said.

“I believe that Georgians have lost faith that members of Congress are spending their money wisely; they want to see change, and they want to see leadership,” Westmoreland said. “I have two main goals. First, I want to lead by example and I want to send a serious message to the people in Georgia ’s 3rd District that I share their concern about Washington spending. Second, I want to work to reform how Washington does business. And you can check the record: I’m no Johnny Come Lately to the cause; I was saying the same thing when my own party controlled both houses of Congress.”

The number of earmarks passed by Congress jumped from 3,000 in 1995 to 15,000 in 2005. Last year, Congress passed more than 11,000 earmarks at a cost of more than $15 billion. U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, head of the government’s accountability office, said the earmark process “corrupts the process.” He has testified that the Pentagon has received $20 billion in earmarks that it doesn’t want.
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“This move does not come without sacrifice. My district is one of the fastest-growing in the nation. We have serious infrastructure needs and those of us from the district are more attuned to those needs than bureaucrats in Washington . I will continue to advocate for competitive federal grants to address those needs in my district. In those programs, every one’s on equal footing and the money is allocated based on merit, rather than on who can pull the most strings on Capitol Hill. We need more balance in how federal money is spent across the country, but at the end of the day, we simply need to spend less.”

According to the Political Insider, Tom Price has made the same pledge.

Despite the stance of Westmoreland and Price, it seems that that Republicans in the Senate have given up the fight against wasteful spending and ignored warnings that one of the reasons the GOP suffered losses in 2006 was because of out of control spending.

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Last year, I made some waves over Rep. Jack Kingston not joining the rest of the Georgia GOP delegation in voting to strip pork spending from appropriations bills.

Yesterday, while pursuing the AJC I saw this…Kingston defending the tradition of pork spending:

Rep. Jack Kingston is making no apologies for being the House champion for Georgia when it comes to snagging federal dollars for his home state and his home district around Savannah.

In the current spending bills working their way through Congress for the new fiscal year, which begins next month, Kingston is sponsoring or co-sponsoring earmarks estimated at $83 million, more than any other Georgian in the House.

Despite being a conservative Republican, Kingston argues that snagging programs and projects is a time-honored tradition for Georgia lawmakers.

Some of the stuff the AJC lists are things that you can make an argument for, but there are earmarks in the past that Kingston has sponsored that are more than questionable.

An editorial in today’s Athens Banner-Herald scolds Kingston:

So where’s Kingston today, 14 years after signing the Contract With America? Touting his ability to get things done for his district the same way they’d been done by the Democratic congressional delegations in Georgia’s past, that’s where.

That may be good for Georgia, but there’s a real question about whether it’s good for the rest of this country.
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Until those kinds of needs are met, it’s more than a little unseemly for Kingston - or any other congressman who might be similarly inclined - to grandstand about their performance in manipulating a flawed system for allocating taxpayer dollars.

I find Kingston’s grandstanding comment to be a shot at a couple of his fellow Congressman from Georgia, namely Westmoreland and Deal, who routinely vote for the Flake Amendments, which are aimed at pork projects in appropriations bills. Kingston has a poor record with these amendments when compared to his colleagues, and that simply has to change.

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Chambliss and Isakson voted to strip appropriations for the International Peace Garden in North Dakota, a baseball park in Montana and a wetlands center in Louisana. The amendment, which failed 32-63, was sponsored by Senator Tom Coburn.

H/T: Club for Growth

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The Club for Growth has released the RePORK card for 2007, up to this point, which rates Congressman on the fifty anti-pork amendments that have been offered.

Here are some examples of targeted pork projects:

• $1 million to the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
• $2 million to establish the “Rangel Center for Public Service” at City College of New York
• $34 million for the Alaska Native Education Equity program
• $50,000 for the National Mule and Packers Museum in California
• $100,000 for renovation of the Fire Fighters Hall in Columbus, Ohio
• $100,000 for the renovation of St. Joseph College’s theatre in Indiana

Georgia is doing well, or at least as well as one can expect. We have one of the more pro-taxpayer delegations in the country. Westmoreland (50/50), Deal (50/50) and Broun (12/12) are batting 1.000. Price (49/50) and Linder (48/50) aren’t far off. Much praise is deserved for these guys on this front.

Gingrey (37/50) and Kingston (26/50) are lagging, though Kingston has voted for more of anti-pork amendments than anyone else on the House Appropriations Committee.

Barrow (10/50) and Marshall (8/41), like Kingston, leave much to be desired.

Bishop (1/48), Johnson (1/48), Lewis (1/50), Scott (1/50) are very much pro-pork and ordinarily don’t mind spending taxpayer dollars on vote buying projects for themselves or their colleagues. However, they joined the rest of the Georgia delegation in voting to strike a $129,000 earmark for the “perfect Christmas tree.”

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Since he has been in office, Paul Broun has voted for all of Jeff Flake’s anti-pork amendments that have been brought to the floor for a vote.

So…good on the new Congressman from Georgia’s 10th District.

Also, Bill Shipp has a good column on how Broun’s victory is bad news for incumbents.

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