Lame duck Senate spending bill includes a $48 billion earmark

   I have previously written about the latest $1 trillion, 2,000 page, earmark laden omnibus spending bill that was proposed in the Senate here. There are over 6,000 earmarks in this spending bill, but there is one earmark in particular that takes the cake.  Lamar Mickens of the United States House of Representatives from Missouri has introduced an earmark in this spending bill of $48 billion that is designed to divert money to the inner cities. (Yes, that is billion with a “B”) Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, also of Missouri, has declined to disclose whether or not he supports this earmark even as he has vowed to fight for every single earmark in this bill.

  However he has defended this earmark:

The Epicenter is a proposed estimated $48 billion (Phase One) mass scale urban reclamation project for combating, reducing, reversing and/or eliminating poverty within under served communities by utilizing mass scale economic redevelopment to bring about stability and self reliance

  And Mickens is defending this earmark by claiming that it will help the economy in the long run:

the $48 billion earmark would funnel money into the inner cities to give money to the poor and thereby produce a much larger consumer class to buy the goods and services produced in this country

The justification for this outrageous earmark goes something like this: This money will go to poorer inner-city families who will then have more money to spend in the system and this will help to improve the economy. But this isn’t going to create more money to spend in the economy, it is just redistributing wealth that is already in the economy.

  This earmark is shifting money to new consumers, but it is not going to help the economy because the same amount of wealth exists, this just simply changed which people would be spending the money. This is nothing more than redistributing the wealth, which is they are trying to implement under the guise of doing what is right to jump start our stagnant economy.

  This earmark has nothing to so with helping to jump start the economy and has everything to do with implementing the left’s socialist agenda of wealth redistribution. If the left was really concerned with helping the economy that would pass legislation that put more hands in the money of ALL Americans and they could easily do with by cutting taxes. If they did this every single American would have more money to “reinvest” in the system, only then would there be more money available to jump start the system. But that is not what this earmark is about. This is simply taking money from one group of Americans and giving it to another group of Americans, and while this may help certain Americans it will do nothing to help the economy.

  The least that people like Mickens and Cleaver could do would be to be honest about what their goals are, but they are afraid to tell the people what they actually believe, so they try to spin their socialist agenda into this really being about the economy.

  This is precisely what the American voters rejected last month, but the outgoing members of the Congress feel as though it is more important for them to push through as much of their radical agenda as possible before they go away forever. They simply do not care about the message that the American people sent them. They are more dangerous now than ever before and this must be stopped until the new Congress can convene in January to do the people’s business.

  You can read more about this at Political Realities and Capitol Commentary, both articles are must read material.