Lower spending? "Who ya' gonna' call?"

Did you see where there are less earmarks coming out of Congress now, since the 2008 elections when the Democrats took over?

Yeah.

Check it out, from the Office of Management and Budget:

"The Administration has just completed its count of the earmarks contained in the Fiscal Year 2010 appropriations bills, the last of which the President signed into law in mid-December. Although more needs to be done, the news is encouraging: earmarks are down by double-digit percentages….These reductions build on the progress that has been made on earmarks since 2006, reductions prompted by a series of reforms that then-Senator Obama helped to write – including bringing more transparency and disclosure to the process."

There was a little blurb about it in the Star yesterday in "Today's Top 5" column on B2. I thought it too important to pass up.

"Members of Congress obtained about 2,000 fewer pet projects last year, according to White House analysis released Monday. Lawmakers stuffed 9,192 so-called earmarks into bills last year, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $11 billion."

That's the bad news, of course.

Here's the good: "That's a 17% drop in the number of earmarks and a 27% reduction in cost."

But wait! There's more!

This just out today on CNN:

"The 'Pig Book,' an annual report detailing the excesses of pork spending, has served up its usual heavy-duty mockery of congressional excesses. But this year the meat spit is smaller."

"The number and costs of congressional pork projects dropped this year, the Citizens Against Government Waste said in its '2010 Congressional Pig Book Summary,' issued on Wednesday."

"The 9,129 projects in the report 'represent a 10.2 percent decline from the 10,160 projects identified in fiscal year 2009, and the $16.5 billion in cost is a 15.5 percent decrease from the $19.6 billion in pork in fiscal year 2009,' the group said."

So what's that, you say? You thought Republicans were more responsible with the people's money?

I guess you'd be wrong, wouldn't you?

Additional link to story:
http://washingtonindependent.com/82043/congressional-earmarks-decline-sharply