Republicans and John Kline are Lying about Earmarks!

Today, John Kline and Steve Sarvi debated. It might have seemed like a reasonable debate, except that John Kline had to outrageously lie often to sound like he was in the debate. Let's just take apart one area of lies this time - earmarks!

The first lie is that earmarks are important! One gets the sense from John Kline or any Republican speaking, that if we simply fix the earmarks, we fix our budget problems. Actually, earmarks are less than 1% of the budget (New York Times), as this graphic shows. At a time when all national credit is frozen and we are doing a 700 billion dollar CPR on our financial system, John Kline is doing the equivalent of complaining about paper clips being stolen.

(Economists View)

Wait, wait, the importance of earmarks is not the only deception about earmarks...

The second lie about earmarks is that the Republicans would have fixed the earmark problem if only they had the power, that in some way they were blocked by Democrats. Well, actually John Kline was elected in 2002. And during his time in office, Republicans held control of House, Senate, Presidency and Supreme Court! If the Republicans had wanted to outlaw earmarks, then the Republicans easily had the power to do so! But in fact, during the Republican control, the use of earmarks dramatically increased!

(Heritage)

Looking at the facts, no claim of the Republican version of fiscal responsibility can stand after the Republican control of all branches of federal government resulted in 1) lack of balanced budget 2) increased government spending 3) increased use of earmarks.

The third lie is that when the Democrats regained some power in the federal House of Representatives, that they blocked earmark reform when actually the Democrats pushed through the first earmark reforms!

In 2006, Democrats, then in the minority, made earmark overhaul a campaign theme. Last year, they passed laws requiring lawmakers for the first time to take public responsibility for the earmarks they added to spending bills.
(New York Times)

So the party who led the reforms were the Democrats.

And you are thinking, there cannot be more, but yes there is!

The fourth lie is the implication that all earmarks are somehow bad, when the quality of the earmarks is truly a reflection of the politician! Democrats believe in and create good government, while the Republicans think that government is for their own personal corruption. The very infamous "bridge to nowhere" was a Republican earmark! Here is an example of a good government earmark:

For example, the I-293 interchange project in Manchester will receive $1.7 million in an earmark that Gregg and Shea-Porter requested.
(Union Leader)

Hmmm, there are bridges, roads and interchanges that could have been fixed in John Kline's second district! So while earmarks are a way of allocating budget, John Kline gave up a chance to help his own district!