Blogging for Max

Athens Congressman John Barrow received a score of 0-out-of-19 on the Club for Growth’s “435 Districts - 435 Blogs Against Pork.” The score is based on yes-or-no votes on Congressman Jeff Flake’s (R-Ariz.) 19 “anti-pork amendments.”

The amendments are part of Flake’s personal crusade to end runaway spending “for things that really we shouldn’t be doing.” With an estimated $350 billion deficit and a debt well-over $8 trillion, Flake says Congressional pork-barrel projects, specifically in the form of “earmarks,” need to end.

The amendments were added by Flake to 19 pork projects including $20 million earmarked for the Leonard Wood Institute, $500,000 for a swimming pool in California, $1 million for the Juniata Locomotive Demonstration, $1 million for the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, $100,000 for unnamed “facilities” in West Virginia (do I even need to mention the King of Pork Bobby Byrd?) and a multitude more for other projects.

And Barrow isn’t doing much to help the problem. In fact, according to the Club for Growth’s list, Barrow voted “no” on all 19 amendments – receiving a bottom-of-the-barrel score (pardon the pun) and signifying an exposed position in favor of all of the pork projects.

Not only is Barrow clearly toting the Democratic Party line and revealing his impotence to party persuasion, but he’s doing so in a manner that demonstrates fiscal irresponsibility.

From the article:

435 Districts - 435 Blogs Against Pork

Thanks to Congressman Jeff Flake’s 19 anti-pork amendments, we now have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks. Before now, House members have been able to avoid scrutiny because their pork was co-mingled with other projects and tucked into the dark corners of big spending bills. Or they were able to withstand the scrutiny because they were attacked as a whole chamber and not directly attacked themselves.

But because of Flake’s amendments, they were recently forced to cast up-or-down votes on specific projects. They could no longer deflect attention. Below is a summary scorecard of how they voted (below the scorecard are the actual vote descriptions). If you want an itemized list, you can click on any one of the following PDFs. A “YES” vote on any of the Flake amendments is a good, anti-pork vote. A “NO” vote is a bad, pro-pork vote. Therefore a score of 19-for-19 is a perfect, pro-taxpayer record. A 0-for-19 record means hostility to taxpayers.

So this is our call to “Pork Barrel Barrow” to publicly denounce his actions… to apologize to the people of the 12^th District, Georgia, and America for his wasteful practices.

We know it’s not going to happen, so hopefully the good people of South Georgia can make it happen by giving Barrow the boot in November.