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From left, Nevada Reps. Joe Heck, Shelley Berkley and Dean Heller react to President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will veto bills that contain earmarks during the State of the Union address Tuesday night in the U.S. Capitol.
By Karoun Demirjian (contact) 
Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011 | 9:02 p.m.
Sun Coverage
Say farewell to the days when going to Congress meant bringing home the bacon.
In what might constitute one of the biggest constitutional consolidations of presidential power in the country’s history, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday in his State of the Union speech the end of the earmark era.
“Both parties in Congress should know this,” Obama said. “If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.”
It’s not a particularly novel suggestion from the Oval Office: Obama proposed an earmarks ban in this same speech a year ago. But the promise to veto makes it more than just a change in policy: It’s in many ways an upending of the political culture, especially in a place such as Nevada.
Earmarks, otherwise known as “pork barrel” spending, have come to represent the excesses of special interests and cronyism in Washington, especially through spending projects like Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere, or Sparks’ infamous $225,000 pool.
In Nevada, they’ve also been behind projects like the Veterans Hospital in North Las Vegas, opening this year.
“We don’t think that a service for 50,000 veterans is pork barrel,” said Wayne Leroy, Nevada chairman of the Elks National Service Commission. (Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley secured a $350 million earmark in 2008 to help fund the $600 million project.) “That was about the only way that the hospital could get established,” Leroy said. “Now I’m sure this sort of project will be more difficult to do, if we’re able to at all.”
In 2010, Nevada ranked 11th in the country in earmark per capita spending, according to a survey of the 50 states and the District of Columbia by the anti-earmark spending group Citizens Against Government Waste. Its $58.50 per head threshold is still a far cry from chart-topping Hawaii’s $251.78, but it still puts it in the top tier — targeted spending largely credited to the influence of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Earmarks are “our bread and butter, and the most time-tested model of how you win re-election,” UNLV political science professor David Damore said.
Reid certainly seems to think so.
“It’s a lot of pretty talk,” Reid said of the president’s pledge to, as Obama said later Tuesday, assure the American people “that special interests aren’t larding up legislation with pet projects” by vetoing any bill with an earmark in it.
“It is only giving the president more power,” Reid said. “He’s got enough power already.”
But with the economy still struggling its way out of a recession and the country at large hurtling itself headfirst toward a fixed debt ceiling, Obama has been struggling to respond with appropriately robust ventures to rein in Washington’s excesses.
First, he froze salaries of federal employees. Next, he promised to cut the budget — by $400 billion, Obama said Tuesday night. Now, the earmark ban.
This “will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president,” Obama said.
Some Nevada lawmakers approved the gesture, and the president’s other economic promises.
“I applauded the president’s commitment to demonstrating fiscal restraint,” said Republican Rep. Joe Heck, the newest member of Nevada’s delegation. “I’m cautiously optimistic that the president will follow through on his promise to concentrate on creating private-sector jobs. If the president is serious about his promise, then I look forward to working with him on it.”
But others say there’s no point to a gesture that doesn’t, in itself, cut spending.
An empty seat for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011, during President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. is at left, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. is at right.
Eliminating earmark spending — which amounted to less than 1 percent of the federal budget last year — doesn’t necessarily reduce overall spending; it just shifts the decision-making process from the Capitol to the White House.
“The only thing that would happen is it would create the potential for Nevada not to get its share,” said David Cherry, spokesman for Berkley. “Lawmakers can act as advocates to the president ... but there’s no guarantee.”
In focusing on the economy and spending, Obama made his administration’s investment priorities clear — although the president’s budget isn’t due out until mid-February. In his speech, Obama pledged not to cut spending in education, clean energy, innovation and development — areas he sees as key to ensuring the United States’ long term competitiveness.
“We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl that needs to be celebrated; it’s the winner of the science fair,” Obama said. “We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology — an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people,” he said, adding that he would invest in, and expand, Race to the Top education funding — a program to encourage innovation in public education — and create 100,000 teaching jobs in math and science.
Nevada missed out on the program when recipients were announced last year.
That stands somewhat in contrast to spending cuts proposed Monday night in Gov. Brian Sandoval’s State of the State address, where he announced a 9 percent reduction — which is actually 17 percent reduction if one takes stimulus funds that have been available over the past two years into account — to education spending. Nevada’s education system is ranked last in the nation.
Vice President Joe Biden talks with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011, prior to the start of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
But some lawmakers prefer Sandoval’s approach.
“The difference between Gov. Sandoval’s State of the State address and President Obama’s State of the Union address is that the governor gave specifics ... he told us his plan for bringing us out of the economic doldrums that we’re in,” Republican Sen. John Ensign said. “The president tonight offered very few specifics and I heard the term ‘investment’ a lot, and that’s just a code word for spending.”
Ensign is opposed to increased federal intervention in the education system and said the president’s freezing the budget at post-stimulus levels was unsatisfactory. Ensign is standing with several Republicans to call for a spending reduction that would include intervention into entitlement programs such as Medicaid.
Republicans are proposing a privatization of programs such as Medicaid and Social Security — a nonstarter with most Democrats.
“Republicans have a responsibility to work with us to create jobs instead of wasting time with pointless political stunts,” Reid said. “Instead of refighting old battles and pressing extreme, ideological plans to end Social Security and Medicare, I hope they will join us in finding common-sense solutions to the challenges we face as a nation.”
Ensign — who regularly requests earmarks for Nevada — applauded the president’s proclaimed moratorium.
“Earmarks are just buying too many votes to increase spending,” Ensign said. “I appreciated that in the president’s speech tonight.”
Would have been nice to see Harry Reid's face when he said he would veto earmarks. Harry is the king of earmarks.
Actions speak louder than words. We'll see! They will close loopholes and more will open.
What we need is a 20% across the board spending cut. Yes it would be painful. Yes leaving it to later will probably be too late.
Reid is so out of touch. Whether it cuts 1% or 10%, it's a start. Pork spending needs to go the way of the horse and buggy.
You can't spend what you don't have. The money is not there. Like any household in America it's time to tighten the belt. Everything is on the table.
All Obama can do is talk a good game. He has added 4 TRILLION DOLLARS to the deficit in 2 years with nothing to show for it except increased unemployment.
Still, the left and their media worships this guy and everything he reads on the teleprompter.
I say Obama goes after the billions and billions in defense spending.
Those of you with military contracts? Too bad, time to go find other work.
This is like maxing out your credit card and then saying, "I'm not going to use it anymore"!
Exactly, TheSerfAttack.
"Obama vows to put an end to pork barrel spending"
Obama didn't do anything. The voters of this nation "put an end" to it in November.
Obama will go down in history as one of the
best presidents ever.
Eat your hearts out, republicans.
Oh, I forgot, you have no hearts.
Oh, please. Like we haven't heard the "no more pork barrel spending" promise from the last five presidents.
Obama will be faced with the same decisions past presidents have. I can't remember the exact words, but George W. mentions it in his book stating that a good piece of legislation would come to his desk, but it would have these cruddy earmarks in it. So the question the president faces is: Do I score a win by signing this piece of legislation that will do some good, or do I veto it out of principal because of the earmarks and risk never having the bill on my desk again?
This president will do what every president before him has done: sign it.
And for the Sun to represent that this is a new idea that's revolutionary (as slanted in the headline and the first few paragraphs), is sickening and irresponsible.
Despite what President Obama said in his speech last night, here is the real state of the Union:
1.) The debt held by the public stands at $14,062,239,904,820.69 effective January 24th, 2011.
2.) In the month of December 2010, the United States paid $104,700,174,845.03 in interest on its public debt. That puts the deficit reduction of $400 billion over 10 years into perspective, doesn't it?
3.) The U6 unemployment rate stands at 16.7 percent.
4.) Housing prices continue to drop as shown in today's Case-Schiller home price index with nine major markets hitting new lows.
The greatest issue facing the United States is mounting interest payments on the debt. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that, under their best case scenario, interest payments could rise to 4 percent of GDP (or one-sixth of federal revenues) by 2035. Interest payments, which absorb federal resources that could otherwise be used to pay for government services, currently amount to more than 1 percent of GDP.
Here's an article outlining the interest rate spiral that is facing the Obama administration:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/201...
Heaven help us all when interest rates rise to historical norms.
Seems to me that within a great speech the President was pretty clear he would not sign earmarked bills. It would be pretty tough to explain why he did if earmarks are there.
All I know is: figures don't lie, but liars figure!
Debbie Smith inflames without understanding the issue. Debbie, what has been the history of public debt from day one forward? Who holds the debt (and don't yell about the Chinese without noting all the other groups who hold that debt)? Who runs that blog you have now referred to more than once? What is their expertise and why should anyone listen to him/her/it? Have there been times in the past when interest payments have been a higher percentage of GDP? Come on Debbie show you actually have some thinking going on!
If President Obama announced that he'd talked the Chinese into forgiving all of our debt, the Nuts would find a way to disparage it.
They're so stuck on saying NO!!!, that anything that requires an affirmative response is inherently "evil".
l SAY AGAIN. LINE ITEM VETO!!!! THAT IS ALL.
How sly of Obama to call for a ban on ear marks NOW, after he has already signed over 9,000 of them into law! How devious of him to call for a spending freeze NOW, after he has already locked-in spending initiatives that are driving us into economic oblivion! How clever of him to call for "bi-partisanship" NOW, after he and his fellow Democrats shut the GOP out for the past four years! Is anyone still buying the baloney this president is selling? Answer: Yes! There are still millions of people who are blindly following their persuader-in-chief down the road to tyranny!
No more pork barrel spending from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. We will be watching carefully.
And there are millions of people that only want to think one way about the President and neglect to take into account what would have happened to our economy if the President hadn't taken the steps he has taken.
The end of "pork barrel" spending is announced only one month after Obama and the other ruling pigs attempted to push the $1,100,000,000,000.00 omnibus bill through Congress. The scary thing is that some Americans are stupid enough to believe that the king of all pigs is going to end "pork barrel" spending.
On another note, I guess it would be too much to ask the Sun to place Obama's "groundbreaking" earmark announcement in its proper context. First, Republican Congressional leadership announced it was going to end earmarks in mid-November. Second, ending earmarks has only a very small correlation to ending pork barrel spending (as evidenced by Obama/Reid/Pelosi's attempt to ram the $1,100,000,000,000.00 omnibus bill through Congress in its waning days in December).
We all know that Obama will never be remembered as being fiscally conservative, or even merely fiscally responsible. Anyone who argues or attempts to pretend otherwise is simply spinning the truth.
Hey Bob, the Realist, one thing - why only mention getting women sterlized? How bout snipping the men as well? Realist are you or perhaps you think you are a real bad-azz macho man huh? In my book it still takes 2 to tango... and yes, I realize there's artificial insemination but that sperm has to come from somewhere :(
oh, and by the way, other than your snarky remark about sterilizing the women, I actually agree with your attitude - that's how I feel as well. Want something better than bread/water - GET A JOB!
As stated above... test welfare recipients for drugs & alcohol, as the majority of the rest of the nation must pass to get a job or stay on the job, and if they fail then they can not have help for 10 years or even the rest of their life. If you fail a drug test on the job or pre-employment you will be fired or not hired in the first place. Why not the same or even stricter for welfare & etc recipients as they do not work for their money and benefits.
Also close the tax loop holes. CLOSE THEM ALL and take 15 - 20% from each and everyone including corporations, llcs ...etc. That is the fairest and also would take care of our deficit. Nobody gets loop holes.
Cut the government and put the welfare etc.. recipients to work doing it for their weekly checks and health coverage. Want money and benefits? Work for them instead of sitting at home.
Every time Obama (Messiah of Hope and Change) opens his mouth....he's lying.
Just like Joe Wilson said so.
What is Harry Reid going to do if he can't bring barrel and barrel of pork back to Nevada? That is his only saving grace for the state. That is basically one one his political platforms.
He always does everything he promises. Harry is really squirming now.
this fool and his liberal/socialist buddies have spent us into debt forever, never to get out, and now that the country has voted many libs out of office does he say we need to stop the spending....please, your act is up, your lies are no longer believed by many of the sheeple you fooled before, lets gets these last two years over, hopefully we make it out still entact as a country and move on , you will go down as the one term worst President this country has ever seen, of course Carter will still be a close second (another lib, surprising huh?)
We should embrace socialism just like Chavez!!
Republicans made this massive mess we are in by
lying us into Iraq and sending all of our jobs
to COMMUNIST CHINA.
NEVER TRUST A LYING REPUBLICAN.
Democrats always have to fix a republican mess.