Thursday, November 08, 2007

Congress and Mark Souder do NOT get it

It is not often that I agree with President Bush. President Bush has found his veto pen and has started trying to restore a little fiscal sanity in Washington D.C. It is too little, too late; however, at least he has decided to try and cut a small amount of spending.

His most recent veto is of the proposed WRDA (Water Resources Development Act.)

A little history is needed to analyze this bill.

The WRDA is a bill that used to be passed each year and provided a list of projects (often earmarks) that the Federal Government will spend money on. Many of these projects involve rivers, wetlands, and flooding.

From 1997 – 2000 the WRDA was passed once per year. The average Bill was for 1.71 Billion dollars.

In 2000 President Clinton took exception to the size of the WRDA Bill when it was a “measly” 1.376 Billion dollars.

Since 2000 a WRDA bill has not been signed into law. This has to be blamed on the Republican controlled Congress and Senate in 2001-2006.

This has caused a large backlog of projects to build up. If you adjusted for inflation one would expect the 2007 WRDA to be 14.5 billion dollars since it is a bill covering 2001 – 2007.

The Democrat controlled House came up with a bill costing 15 billion and the Democrat controlled senate came up with a bill costing 14 billion. Once everything is considered this spending is in line with past spending.

So the bill was discussed in a committee between the two and it grew to 23 billion dollars. This is a completely absurd figure and one that no fiscal conservative could support since we are already running a sizable budget deficit and we have large fiscal problems (Medicare and Social Security) looming in the next few decades.

Believe it or not; this bill has broad bi-partisan support and easily passed both Houses this year.

President Bush wisely vetoed it; the House over-rode his veto yesterday and the Senate over-rode his veto today. Almost every Democrat voted to over-ride the veto AND a MAJORITY of Big Government Republicans voted to over-ride the veto as well!

Mark Sounder (R) is our Representative. He is defending the Bill and voted with Nancy Pelosi yet again. You can read his comments in the JG:
http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071106/NEWS03/711060329/1002/LOCAL

Mark Souder is a big government Republican if I ever saw one. He consistently votes for larger government and is proud of it.

Do any of the readers of this blog remember the negative attack adds Congressman Souder ran against Tom Hayhurst where he said that Tom Hayhurst would vote with Nancy Pelosi?

The bill has a grand total of 7 million dollars that will be spent in Mark Souder’s Congressional District. That is why he supports the Bill…

Mark Souder needs to take a refresher course in math!

Lets look at this, if you divide 23 billion (Total cost of the Bill) by 7 million that results in .0304347%.

There are 435 Congressional Districts in the US. That means that if the money in the WRDA were split evenly among all of the Congressional Districts each District would get .229885% of the money.

So we are getting 13.24% as much as we should if the money were split evenly.

Projects like this should be funded by local Government and not the Federal government.

Mark Souder needs to be voted out of office in 2008. I am sick and tired of him voting for larger and larger government.

Mike Sylvester

8 comments:

John B. Kalb said...

Mike - I'm in full agreement with you. This is why we need term-limits - Souder has out-stayed his time in congress - We need to get Larsen to run again in the Republican primary next year and all of us work to get him elected. Please put me on-board for your campaign, Bill. John B. Kalb

Jeff Pruitt said...

Elections are term limits - ask Don Schmidt...

Anonymous said...

You need a viable candidate to challenge Souder. That is not Larson.

Anonymous said...

Get out the butter and jam...Souder is toast next year. Even if he makes it out of the primary, there are a great many Libertarian and GOP voters who are sick of him. He campaigned on a promise of term limits, then reneged when the time to honor his pledge rolled around. Really, what is he qualified to do in real life, other than "be a Congressman?" It's time to re-enter the real world, Mark.

Anonymous said...

WE need SYLVESTER (L) to run in the primary!!

SYLVESTER (L) FOR CONGRESS!!!!

steve said...

Don't give the Bush administration any credit for spending, Mike. We spend so much money in Iraq each week, that any talk of fiscal conservatism from Bush and war-supporting congresspeople is farcical.

I'm not as familiar with the WRDA, but some of the project funded by the act seem to be important. Maybe there could have been a better point of compromise. There's certainly more of a question here than there was with SCHIP. Vetoing SCHIP spending was politically foolish, and damaging to the process towards better healthcare.

gadfly said...

steve ...

SCHIP is a Republican program. GWB did not oppose SCHIP ...he opposed expanding it to recipients that were not children. Big govenment Democrats who want to send us further down the Socialism path may agree with your party, but there are some of us who know that capitalism is the strength of this nation and its economy.

And where else in the world can you get the health care available here?

William Larsen said...

Anonymous says a viable candidate, but not Larsen. I would like to know why not? In Allen County I received 35% of the vote using just campaign signs. An 85% increase over 2002. Over the third district 305 of the voters supported me. Paul Helmke did not get much more and he spent over a $100K.

Souder is not a conservative and does not care about the future. In 2002 I brought Social Security to the forefront. Is it a little problem, medium size or large?

Souder said we could not send every illegal alien back to where they came from. I said in a couple of months you could easily send back half. In another six months you could send another 25% back. You may not get them all, but you at least should try.

Souder thins getting back pennies on the dollar is great, I say this is terrible.

Souder puts up a good front on the VA hospital, but I have suffered with others under the VA hospital. He may have a broad idea of the problems, but I have first hand knowledge.

Souder is a conscientious objector. I am a Veteran, disable at that from service connected injuries.

Souder thinks supporting Ethanol is great, I think it is a waste of money.

The list goes on.

By the way what determines a viable candidate?

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