We need earmark reform, and when I'm President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.
I think we ought to ban earmarks. I think we ought to give citizens the opportunity to designate up to 10 percent of their federal income tax toward debt reduction. If we did that, we would reduce our debt by $95 billion a year.
During my first term in Congress, I signed a pledge that I will take no more earmarks and I've been faithful to that pledge.
Politicians like to confuse congressional spending with earmarks. There is a difference.
Earmarks are almost always inserted by a member of Congress without any notice to other members, and without a chance for Congress as a whole to debate a particular earmark as they relate to national priorities.
If you look at history we've had since I've been in office, in an environment where we haven't had earmarks, we've still been able to get tens of millions of dollars for McLennan County.
The responsible use of earmarks can have public benefits.
We know that appropriators will fight these cutbacks. But by eliminating earmarks, we can stop the horse trading that grows agency budgets.
Many of the earmark request forms are actually filled out by lobbyists and then just turned in by the member's staff to the appropriations committee.
Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington.