This is an Open Thread: Sorry Were Open/Yes Were Closed
USA
Spending Bills Still Stuffed With Earmarks
Democrats Had Vowed To Curtail Pet Projects
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 21, 2007; Page A01
Twice in the past two years, Alaska lawmakers lost congressional earmarks to build two “bridges to nowhere” costing hundreds of millions of dollars after Congress was embarrassed by public complaints over the pet projects hidden in annual spending bills.
This year, Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who are Alaska Republicans, found another way to move cash to their state: Stevens secured more than $20 million for an “expeditionary craft” that will connect Anchorage with the windblown rural peninsula of Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
Now what Alaska has, budget watchdogs contend, is a ferry to nowhere.
Bush remains thorn in Democrats’ side
By Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
7:14 PM PST, December 20, 2007
WASHINGTON — Just more than a year ago, a chastened President Bush acknowledged that his party had taken a “thumping” in the congressional elections, and he greeted the new Democratic majority at the weakest point of his presidency.
But since then, Democrats in Congress have taken a thumping of their own as Bush has curbed their budget demands, blocked a cherished children’s health initiative, stalled the drive to withdraw troops from Iraq and stymied all efforts to raise taxes.
Rather than turn tail for his last two years in the White House, Bush has used every remaining weapon in his depleted arsenal — the veto, executive orders, the loyalty of Republicans in Congress — to keep Democrats from getting their way. He has struck a combative pose, dashing hopes that he would be more accommodating in the wake of his party’s drubbing in the 2006 mid-term voting.