Pork lover

Senator John McCain has been a porkbuster for a long time. Recently, he and Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina crafted a bill that would place a one year moratorium on earmarks; otherwise known as pork.

Recent converts to porkbusting Senators Clinton and Obama have decided to be election-year cosponsors of this bill.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today participated in a rally to support the amendment being offered by Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to the 2009 budget resolution that will impose a year-long moratorium on congressional earmarks.  The co-sponsors include three Senate Democrats, Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), along with five other Senate Republicans.

However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid disagrees with his parties nominees for President

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who strongly opposes the DeMint amendment, said Wednesday he wasn’t sure whether there is enough opposition to defeat the moratorium this week...

“As we look back in history, the Founding Fathers would be cringing to hear people talking about eliminating earmarks,” Reid said, noting that the Founders dictated in the Constitution that all spending should originate in Congress, not the executive branch.

But Ed Morrissey writing over at Hot Air points out precisely what Founding Father Thomas Jefferson thought of pork

Thomas Jefferson made a similar prediction in a letter to James Madison dated March 6, 1796, challenging Madison’s proposition for improvements to roads used in a system of national mail delivery. Jefferson wrote:

Have you considered all the consequences of your proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post office revenues; but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a scene of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest.

What does that say about Senator Reid?