Reid: It’s My Constitutional Duty to Pass This Pork-Laden Omnibus Bill

Here are some tweets coming from Washington reporter Jamie Dupree, who was at the Harry Reid press conference, today, regarding the omnibus bill , full of thousands of earmarks, that’s being debated in the Senate:

1. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) telling reporters right now that "we have a constitutional duty " to approve earmarks
2. More Reid on earmarks: "I can't understand why more conservative members want to give up their power"
3. BROADSIDE ON REPUBLICANS: Reid labels GOP Senators who have earmarks but vote against them "hypocrites”

This isn’t the first time that Reid has said that it is his “constitutional duty” to spend your money. It not shocking about how clueless that Reid is on this. True, it is Congress’ duty to appropriate funds, but he is leaving out that the reason why there is so much angst against this type of spending is that it is often wasteful, and most of them wouldn’t pass muster, if it was ever given full-debate in Congress. It is, also, a problem that many of them look like bribes to certain representatives and senators in exchange for their vote on a particular piece of legislation.

He does have a point that many Republicans that are fighting this bill, now, have earmarks in the bill that they fought for before it was cool to be against them. Although, some of them say that they have “seen the light”, after last month’s elections.

As long as they continue to fight against the bill and vote against it, I don’t think that their flip-flop here won’t hurt them too much. However, I think that they should even go a bit further and push for amendments that would strike their earmarks from the bill. In the future, though, if they return to their old ways and include any earmarks in any future legislation, then, they should be chastised and protested against for such wasteful spending.