Sali Knows How Washington Works-He’s Trying to Change It

In today’s letter, Doug Mason of Meridian writes:

Rep. Bill Sali’s Reader’s View of Dec. 5 was, at best, a distortion of facts. Rep. Sali claims that he voted against “wasteful spending” as the bills in question contained earmarks (a term he avoided throughout his piece) for other districts and the great citizens of Idaho should not have to pay for them.

Does Rep. Sali understand how Congress works? Are any other representatives or states eager to pay for his earmarks?

No, but that is how the budget game is played in Washington, D.C., and if Rep. Sali cannot work the game to his constituents’ advantage, then he is ill-suited to represent Idaho.

If Rep. Sali was so concerned with excessive spending he could have voted in the affirmative to the “pay as you go” legislation, since “… government should never spend more than it collects from taxpayers,” but he did not…

Actually, the PayGo rule as has been chronicled was a joke intended only to make it hard to cut taxes and does not effect Domestic discretionary spending.

In addition, the bill was bloated, not just because of earmarks, but because the size of the bills were far in excess of President Bush’s requests.

Because Congressman Sali and more than 140 other members of Congress said no to the excessive, Democratic Spending requests, our nation will save over $150 billion over the next five years.

I also have to question whether Mr. Mason sees no difference between funding a detox center in Boise and $100,000 for signage for the LA Fashion district? When Mr. Mason describes the process in Washington, he’s right, usually members of Congress say, “I give you your pet projects, you vote for my pet projects.” And that’s how you end up with a $9 trillion national debt. Would Mr. Mason argue that’s in Idaho’s best interest?