Blanche Lincoln's Latest Vote-Buying Earmarks

I wrote this recent post describing what happened in New Jersey when the state's supreme court broke our own rules on fiscal management.

Now the Wall Street Journal has reported that Nebraska Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln has gone to great, essentially illegal extent, to get money from the federal government, in the form of an earmark, with which to bribe the state's voters in the run-up to this November's election.

Congress, believe it or not, has actually legislated limits on how much money the government will pay to bail out farmers. But Lincoln, whose first two tries at buying votes were defeated by her own party members, finally got Wonderboy's administration to use an old "Depression-era law," under which tariff funds can be used to make "emergency payments."

So Lincoln shook down taxpayers across the nation to the tune of $1.5B to try to buy her way back into the Senate. Despite rules in Congress enacted to try to stop this sort of nonsense.

In a year of unprecedented deficit growth, economic sluggishness and general ill-will toward Congress, Blanche Lincoln ignores all that and sticks to tried and true principles.

When an incumbent, use taxpayer money to buy your way into Congress.

No wonder so many voters just want new faces in Congress, regardless of the party affiliation of almost any incumbent.