Today, Americans for Tax Reform, joined by a broad coalition of over 30 different groups, sent a letter to the United States Senate urging members to support Senator DeMint's earmark moratorium for the GOP Senate Conference. Banning earmarks would send a strong signal to taxpayers that Senate Republicans are serious about eradicating the spending disease that infects Washington, D.C. From the letter:
Earmarks are the broken windows of budgets—though they may be considerably small in terms of spending, they pave the way for massive spending that would be unable to gain passage on its own merit. Otherwise conservative members of Congress will vote for politically sensitive spending packages because they contain pork for their districts. To end the deluge of federal spending, members must first end the practice of earmarking.
Without the enticement of earmarks, taxpayers could have been saved nearly a trillion dollars in spending and debt on the so-called “stimulus” package, billions in the health care overhaul and the skyrocketing costs of pork-filled appropriations and authorizations.
Click here to read the letter in its entirety.