The Hill News

The Washington media is reporting on the House GOP’s plan to repeal and replace their promise to ban congressional earmarks. Broken promises by Washington politicians aren’t really news, but the brazenness of reversing their position on earmarks just five weeks after the election grabs attention, as does the fact that the rebellion against the earmark ban is being led by Tea Party favorites.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and others are considering “exemptions” to the earmark ban for pet “transportation projects” and are devising strategies to direct government spending to their pet projects by writing letters and making phone calls to government agencies â€" also known as “lettermarking” and “phonemarking” â€" to influence the decisionmaking process. In addition to this movement to return to the era of the Bridge to Nowhere, a notorious Republican-sponsored “transportation” earmark, congressional Republicans are planning to fool the American people by referring to earmarks as “member-directed spending.”

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