Just last month, voters supposedly sent a very clear message to Washington: Stop the bailouts, stop the earmarks and stop the wasteful spending.
But in recent days President Barack Obama and members of Congress have sent their own message to the American people: We can’t stop ourselves!
And so proposals to continue the spending have proliferated on both sides of the aisle.
Squander $140 billion to unnecessarily extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans.
Hand out a long list of special tax credits and tax breaks, including more costly subsidies for the ethanol industry.
And stuff earmarks worth billions of dollars for special-interest programs into a Senate bill.
Then something strange — and positive — occurred suddenly on Thursday night.
Democratic Senate leaders discovered they didn’t have the votes to pass the huge, earmark-stuffed spending measure.
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