Senator Ted Cruz
In order to curry favor with entrenched Washington special interests, Democrats have signaled their intent to bring back “community-project funding,” a desperate attempt to rebrand pork-barrel projects and revive the corrupt practice of earmarks.
As Democrats continue to push a bloated $1.9 trillion bill that has little to do with providing the relief Americans desperately need, you might have heard that two controversial projects – a rail expansion in California and a bridge in New York State – have been cut from the bill. But if Democrats bring back earmarks it’s unlikely these projects would go unfunded for long.
For too long, earmarks have long been used as a form of legal bribery enabling party bosses to pass irresponsible and bloated spending that have ballooned our trillion-dollar deficits and added to our staggering $28 trillion national debt.
But bringing back earmarks does more than merely replenish the lobbyists’ troughs in Washington D.C. with billions of dollars of special interest spending – it would completely undo a crucial reform enacted a decade ago to restore public trust in Congress. Earmarks have had a historically corruptive influence on the legislative process, which led to the conviction of several Members of Congress and a ban on the practice in 2011.
Bottom Line: Sen. Cruz is focused on restoring fiscal sanity and leading the fight to ban earmarks to protect the legislative process and for the long-term fiscal health of generations of Americans.