A Porkless Hat Trick!
Big Mo' is full of steam! Today, three lawmakers swore off pork. That brings the House total to 32 members.
From Mike Pence's (R-IN-06) office (the press release was emailed to me; I'll provide a link once it's available):
After years of wasteful government spending, it is clear to most Americans that the way Congress spends the people’s money is broken, especially when it comes to earmarks. After years of attempting to reform the earmarking system from within, I have decided that I can no longer be a party to a deeply flawed system, and therefore, I will not be making any appropriation requests for Fiscal Year 2009. Over the course of the next year I intend to work closely with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to achieve meaningful and measurable reforms to the earmark process in the House.
From Jim Sensenbrenner's (R-WI-05) weekly column:
"...given the current House Democratic Leadership’s penchant for increased spending and its refusal to address earmark reform, I am swearing off all earmark requests this year. I normally submit very few appropriations requests as it is, but until the House shows a commitment to pulling the reins on runaway federal spending, I cannot contribute to a broken budget process that keeps raising the bottom line."
And Dave Reichert's (R-WA-08) office even produced a video:
