People who voted for Democrats thinking that they were really going to clean up the corruption and waste in Washington have got to be filing mugging reports today.

“After promising unprecedented openness regarding Congress’ pork barrel practices, House Democrats are moving in the opposite direction as they draw up spending bills for the upcoming budget year.

Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify “earmarks” ‚Äî lawmakers’ requests for specific projects and contracts for their states ‚Äî in documents that accompany spending bills.

Rather than including specific pet projects, grants and contracts in legislation as it is being written, Democrats are following an order by the House Appropriations Committee chairman to keep the bills free of such earmarks until it is too late for critics to effectively challenge them.

Rep. David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., says those requests for dams, community grants and research contracts for favored universities or hospitals will be added spending measures in the fall. That is when House and Senate negotiators assemble final bills to send to President Bush.

Such requests total billions of dollars.

As a result, most lawmakers will not get a chance to oppose specific projects as wasteful or questionable when the spending bills for various agencies get their first votes in the full House in June.”

Whoever thought that the ulimate party of waste, big government would bring change in spending needs to be slapped with a large dead trout.

So far the first six months for “Democrat control” has been nothing but a farse. The stories of corruption by Murtha, Fienstein, along the foriegn policy fupahs by Pelosi, amount to nothing more than a big sign that says, “Suckers”.