9,247 Earmarks: Believe it

The president glossed over the pork in the stimulus bill, and stated next year's budget would have no earmarks, as he promised in his campaign. But what about this year's budget, you know, the one the Dem Congress is presenting to him this week? 9,247 earmarks in a $410 billion budget. RedState:

The prosaic, yet perky, Katie Couric asked McCain if Obama “convinced him at all” with the rhetoric? McCain, after saying Obama’s was “a very effective speech,” seemed, though, to call the president a liar — though certainly in the nicest way possible.

Still, McCain said, “now I would like to know how we are going to implement it.”
“I don’t know where Social Security was,” McCain said. “I don’t know how you increase all of these programs and still cut spending to a point where you cut the deficit in half.”

McCain then addressed the earmarks issue:

“But when he says there are no earmarks - I just picked up a bill that we are going to take up tomorrow that has 9,247 earmarks in it,” a combative McCain continued. “What am I supposed to believe here?”

Earmarks coming out of our ears. Taxpayers for Common Sense is still going through the bill. How about $951,500 for a "sustainable Las Vegas", or $300,000 for a Montana World Trade Center? Who doesn't love Montana but puhleeze. Do we really need a world trade center in the middle of nowhere? Then there's $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii--this sounds lovely but do we need to pay for all this gravy in these tough times? Of course we all know this is one route the pols take to drum up campaign contributions from grateful developers, uh constituents, whatever. Who's counting in this era of TRILLIONS in spending.

We need job creation. We can't afford to waste our resources. Repairing and rebuilding existing bridges, yes. Fully funding and resupplying our troops, creating manufacturing jobs by replacing and upgrading our aging defense structure--buying American in this realm, yes. Reforming health care so that it's not tied to our job and we have a choice about the care we buy, yes.

This is not what we heard last night from our president. Start as you mean to go on. The largely irresponsible porkulus bill is already out the door. Veto this next huge spending bill until it's cleaned up. You can't keep claiming an emergency need to act Mr. President when you are creating a new crisis with this crushing debt we can't handle.

UPDATE: WaPo editorial--restrained reaction to speech, bold agenda but economy must come first. Left-leaning Ruth Marcus asks what's plan B when the rubber meets the road of reality. WSJ--President Obama--I have just begun to spend. And this big concern:

We were especially struck by his determination to pass a carbon "cap and trade" regime, despite the costs it would impose on the economy amid a recession. Only last year Midwest Democrats rebelled against those costs when the Senate debated cap and trade. But in the past week Mr. Obama's green advisers have declared that the Administration will soon formally declare that carbon must be regulated like any pollutant under the Clean Air Act. This will unleash a flood of new regulatory controls across the economy, and perhaps Mr. Obama believes this imperative will drive Congress to act, almost as a kind of relief. But the economic uncertainty alone will further retard business risk-taking just when we need such daring for the economy to recover.

Illinois' economy is already teetering with jobs and citizens leaving the state due to the high tax burden and promise for more to pay off the profligacy of Dems running up debt in this state. Now we face onerous regulatory burdens as well--striking at our industry. Does anyone think this won't drive up our utility costs?