Data Point No. 4,327 that the tea party movement is a dark joke wrapped in the belly fat of a 60-year-old white guy wearing jeans and suspenders: Todd Tiahrt, the Kansas congressman who lost out on a promotion to the Senate, says he wants to be the state's next Republican national committeeman.
Tiahrt tells The Kansas City Star that he will work to ensure that the tea partiers have a voice in the GOP. But a report released this morning indicates that Tiahrt requested $63.4 million in earmarks -- those wasteful, wasteful earmarks -- during the last fiscal year.
In July, Tiahrt joined the tea party caucus along with outspoken Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann and Jerry Moran, Tiahrt's rival for the the open Senate seat.
Tiahrt and Moran spent the summer screeching about federal spending because it was the fashionable thing to do. At the same time, the candidates maintained a familiarity with earmarks, the special requests that members of Congress tuck into legislation.
Moran, who defeated Tiahrt in the Republican primary, made 22 requests in FY 2010 for $19.4 million, according to a National Journal review of records compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste. Tiahrt went larger. His 39 requests for $63.4 million placed him among most extravagant members of the supposedly austere tea party caucus.
In all, the 52 members of the caucus asked for more than $1 billion they could take home to their constituents while simultaneously calling for Washington to be dismantled like a Lego set.
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Any politician that stands before his constituents and tells them he is against Earmarks (Pork barrel spending) is not someone they want representing them in government. Earmarks are necessary but not all of them are worthwhile. These are what the voters are against. $30M going to save some rodent in a marsh out in California is totally absurd. This is just one that pops to mind right now.
The news media and witch hunting groups that bad mouth politicians for Earmarks don�t ever seem to tell you what the project was that the money was suppose to go for. Billions of $$$$ have gone to very good causes, but millions have been squandered on projects that were just political pay backs to individuals or companies who supported someone running for office.
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