Abolishes Earmark Legislation.
This measure ABOLISHES all Earmark Legislation, bills that are appended to other bills, as a reward for one Senator's state, friends, or supporters, without the benefit of any vote in Congress.
The measure also makes EarMark Legislation a criminal act, a felony punishable by a $10,000 Fine and up to 10 Years in Prison.
We The People cannot afford to allow our Legislators to reward their cronies by giving them funding for projects that gives them money for their hobbies, strictly because these people are either friends or family of the Congressman. These earmarks usual
ly serve no useful purpose to anyone except to enrich the friends of the Congressman or woman involved. Examples of some of these EarMark bills are $400,000 to study frogs in Minnesota. The study of Frogs is usually done by a college or university professor or students working on a thesis or paper and should never be the duty of the taxpayer to fund these things, unless voted on by the full Congress. Another example recently is the Senator from Alaska, now under investigation for Fraud, gave 500 million dollars for a bridge in Alaska to a town that didn't really exist, just a few hundred people who were happy using the perfectly fine EXISTING BRIDGE. This was obviously a project that the Senator's friend, a contractor would have spent mainly on himself and no regard to society as a whole. Even if this bridge was found to be necessary, why do the other 49 states have to pay for it. It should have been funded out of state coffers.
The way they get these things passed is by attaching their Earmarks to a larger bill, say the Defense Bill or the Farm Subsidies bill and they do it in the middle of the night so that other Senators don't get to see it. This kind of thing costs us billions and billions of dollars and without a duty to balance the budget, the Senators and Congressmen are out of control. "It's not our money, so who cares." This has become their mantra. See companion National Ballot Measure - FORCING a BALANCED BUDGET.
By SIMPLY HAVING A NATIONAL BALLOT MEASURE that makes it a crime to secretly attach earmarked funds to an existing piece of legislation, this nonsense would stop and we might get a decent and responsible Congress once again. BUT, while we wait to have REAL DEMOCRACY in AMERICA, our leaders know that there is NOTHING WE CAN DO TO CONTROL THEM and they make pretty speeches and deny all their wrongdoing by simply lying straight to our faces. Since there is nothing we can do, they know they can get away with anything.
AND, THERE IS NO ONE IN CONGRESS who EVEN TRIES to stop it for us. We must do it ourselves. We must make some of the laws that can provide us with a SAFE and SOUND country and a FINANCIALLY STABLE Economy. We are not free if we are forced to work two jobs or more to make ends meet. This is simply another form of slavery. We are not free when we are forced to give up an entire industry that has employed millions because they cannot protect our borders or our jobs. We are not free when the COST OF GOVERNING OURSELVES is out of sight with no possible way of paying for it.