Tea Party’s First Victim: Earmarks

From Human Events - by Brian Darling - A fiscally responsible thing happened on the way to the November 2 election: Rep. Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) announced on behalf of the House Republican Leadership an internal party rule mandating that Republicans will not earmark in the next Congress. This is excellent news for the Tea Party movement and it fills in a missing element of the “Pledge to America.”Late in the summer, House Republicans fumbled the ball on the issue of earmarks. On August 23, House Republican Whip Cantor was quoted in Politico saying that earmarks might return in the next Congress based on “merit, not muscle.”If this weren’t enough, because of intraparty disagreements, the House Republicans did not write anything in the Pledge expressing a promise to rid the budgeting process of the corrupting, wasteful earmarking process. Last week, though, Cantor picked that ball off the turf and ran with it. It looks like GOP leaders will now take it into the end zone in the House and Senate Steering Committee Chairman Jim DeMint (R.-S.C.) will make that same run in the Senate. Read more

Tea Party’s First Victim: Earmarks