Three programs affecting Evanston are earmarked for funding under the House-passed version of the federal economic stimulus plan.
The Daily Herald reports that among $2 million in earmarks designated by Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston are $25,000 for an Evanston anti-gang initiative, $100,000 for the Evanston YWCA’s domestic abuse program and $237,000 for planning expansion of the CTA Yellow Line.
The earmarks total identified by the Herald for Schakowsky is the smallest of the five suburban congressmen the paper studied. Some other suburban lawmakers refused to make any earmarks because of controversy over the funding practice.
All the earmarks remain up in the air because the Senate has delayed a final vote on the program, in part because of concerns about the earmark process.
Critics say earmarks skew funding priorities, inflate budgets and let lawmakers reward campaign contributors with direct federal grants.
Pay To Play With Evanston Machine?
” Critics say that earmarks skew funding priorities, inflate budgets, and let lawmakers reward campaign contributors with direct federal grants.” Bill, I couldn’t have said it any better myself. All citizens should take a hard look at what the lack of campaign finance reform laws, that have real teeth, do to our democracy and budgets. There are real costs to all of us, when money donated to candidates is rewarded with earmarks. It leaves the “insiders” (royalty) in and the rest of the citizens (peasants) out. The unholy alliance of money and favors infects Washington, Springfield and Evanston. Let’s not be naive or complacent. If you didn’t like Bush’s, Blagoevich’s or Daley’s insider “pay to play”, you shouldn’t like it in Evanston. Let Durbin (D) Big Jim, Schakowsky (D) Durbin and Tisdahl (D) Schakowsky and the Illinois Combine know through your vote on April 7th . My thanks to John Kass ( Chicago Tribune- Zell) for (D)idea and the use of Big Jim, who seems smaller all the time.
Kevin O’Connor
Evanston 7th Ward Aldermanic Candidate
http://www.rebootev.com
No Earmarks, the Original False Promise
The three earmarks are all items that should be in the 2009 Federal, State, or local budgets, not in a stimulus plan. Barak Obama pledged early in January that there would be no earmarks in the bill: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/06/obama-to-ban-earmarks-fro_n_155787.html
However, members of Congress only feel powerful when they are spending money for which they don’t have to be responsible.
This is the Omnibus Appropriations Act, not the Stimulus bill
H.R. 1105 – Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009
OpenCongress Summary:
“This bill totals about $410 billion and covers funding for fiscal year 2009 for the nine federal agencies that were not funded under the regular appropriations process last year”
From the Appropriations Committee Website:
Find out more about Brummel Park Neighbors and 75,000 Hours
Sorry, you’re correct.
Sorry, you’re correct. I get confused with the approximately $500,000,000,000 bi-weekly appropriations that the United States House of Reps are coming up with. We’ll be luck to keep the deficit as low as the estimated $1,700,000,000,000.
We’ll have to start using the trick astronomers use for big numbers. The 2009 budget is expected to be almost two million millioin in the red.
We should have pulled the plug on this about a year ago when Congress insisted on throwing several hundred billion dollars at problems every few months without addressing the underlying disease (mainly the policies that they’ve burdened our economy with).
Stimulus allocation and Kevin O’Connor’s non response
Kevin, your reply sounds like political blabber – all the political catch phrases, no content. What would you do with dollars allocated to Evanston?
My question is simple: How many NEW JOBS will the Evanston anti-gang initiative, or the money for Evanston YWCA’s domestic abuse program create?
This is an economic stimulus package so the test should be: it creates new jobs, or prevents documented layoffs. If a specific allocation does neither, it should not be allowed. If it does, great.