HoodaThunk?

Via Instapundit I found this opinion piece in The Examiner about some truly outrageous action by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

As the stock market plunged nearly 1,000 points in two days this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was preoccupied with protecting billions of dollars worth of earmarks contained in a separate, unpublished committee report that got a one-sentence reference in a giant $612 billion defense bill. Reid engineered the 61-to-32 vote to limit debate on the bill, thus barring consideration of an amendment offered by Sen. Jim DeMint. The South Carolina Republican’s amendment would have deleted the reference to the committee report so that it would have to be considered separately. By leaving the language in the bill, the lawmakers were able to carry out one of their favorite maneuvers: Incorporating committee reports into omnibus bills so they can give billions of tax dollars to their cronies without recorded votes on specific spending measures. This is the same Harry Reid who with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of Republican corruption if voters would return the Democrats to the majority.

But Reid’s move was not just a slap at DeMint. Under pressure from a bipartisan coalition of fiscal watchdog groups, including Porkbusters, Club for Growth, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers for Common Sense, President George W. Bush signed an executive order last January that directed federal agencies to ignore earmarks that only appear in committee reports. If DeMint’s proposal had passed, the earmarks in the defense bill’s committee report would have been merely suggestions – not legally binding spending instructions. No wonder Reid made sure the South Carolinian’s amendment never made it to the Senate floor.

It is staggering that this isn’t a major news item in every paper, on every channel. They are conspiring to funnel billions of dollars to people whose names the public never hears, for projects the public never gets to even know about let alone assess for public importance, and they make sure there’s not even a Congressional record of who earmarked what and who voted for it. This is democracy? This is transparency in governance?

The entire premise the Democrats rode into Congress upon in 2006 was that the Republican-controlled Congress was corrupt and out of control in their spending. (Definitely the latter, some of them the former, there’s no doubt about that.) “Elect us,” they said, “and all of that will change!”

It’s done nothing but get worse. And it’ll get worse still if the election strengthens their positions. I’d love to see this defended by Democrat supporters. They have no idea where this money is going or what it’s going to accomplish. The only thing we know is that the public is paying for it. Senator DeMint’s amendment would have allowed our government to simply ignore these anonymous instructions but Reid made sure that idea never saw the light of day. He will keep doing it, I assure you, and it’ll get worse.