Top 39 Earmarks Quotes & Sayings

During my first term in Congress, I signed a pledge that I will take no more earmarks and I've been faithful to that pledge.

Bipartisan reformers have long recognized that earmarks make way for corruption.

For the air of lonely men surrounded him now, a still atmosphere in which the world around him slipped away, leaving him incapable of relationship, an atmosphere against which neither will nor longing availed. This was one of the significant earmarks of his life.

I think I'm the last Democrat left in the Senate after Russ Feingold was defeated that won't take earmarks.

In the world of commercial speech, tobacco advertising bears the earmarks of an endangered species.

The earmark favor factory needs to be boarded up and demolished, not turned over to new management that may or may not have a better eye for earmarks with 'merit.'

La Raza stands for 'The Race' - and they say so openly. They are a pro-Hispanic organization; I will call them a racist organization. They base their philosophy on race. They advocate for those minorities that fit within the category that they define as drives them. They are apologists for illegal immigrants - and we are funding them with your tax dollars in this administration through earmarks. It is outrageous. It's an in-your-face act on the part of this Congress.

Politicians like to confuse congressional spending with earmarks. There is a difference.

After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money that we don't have. But instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt. It was unlike anything we've ever seen before in the history of the country.

After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.

We know that appropriators will fight these cutbacks. But by eliminating earmarks, we can stop the horse trading that grows agency budgets.

Richard Shelby has a long history of sponsoring legislation that would only benefit his largest contributors, for trading earmarks of pork-barrel politics and personal favors in order to benefit himself, his campaign war chest, political action committee, and former members of his Senate staff.

I will veto every single beer, um, bill with earmarks.

I have never been opposed to earmarks.

I've always been interested in past lives, because they're earmarks of what creates us.

It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except the intended target!

The message is pretty clear: Americans are sick and tired of the doubletalk coming out of Washington, of us going home and saying we're conservative and then coming up here and voting for 10,000 earmarks. We can't fool America anymore; the media is too good. They're reporting what we're really doing.

Finally, in the Mississippi state Senate, earmarks are often hidden in bond bills, which I have voted against many times, because our bonded indebtedness is too high and we simply can't afford it. For example, building museums in the middle of a recession makes little sense.

I'd be a lot more excited about eliminating earmarks if we reduced all of the spending by whatever the earmarks used to be, but nobody's, apparently, going to talk about doing that.

Earmarks are supposed to be bad. But they don't increase spending.

Peace is one of the most obvious earmarks of the authority of Christ. A sense of peace will virtually always accompany His will and direction, even when the direction might not have been our personal preference.

The responsible use of earmarks can have public benefits.

I know of three ways to recognize another writer: Writers are shamelessly nosy. Writers tell good stories, even about dumb old, daily things. On most writers, the earmarks of thrift, if not outright povery, are evident.

Earmarks are counterproductive tools for entrenched politicians to shut down debate and buy votes.

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

Our legislative victory - an end to earmarks.

Is it civility for Barack Obama to continually lie, to promise the same things he's promised us last year and the year before? Jobs, jobs, jobs, shovel-ready, shovel-ready, shovel-ready, earmarks, spending freezes, all of these things he's promised before. Where is the civility in misleading the people?

Look, we know we screwed up when we were in the majority. We fell in love with power. We spent way too much money - especially on earmarks. There was too much corruption when we ran this place. We were guilty. And that's why we lost.

I don't think we're crumbling as a civilization, but this is not our finest hour, and it's good to be mindful that we're all susceptible to fall and to look at what are the earmarks of a civilization on the wane. What are they - destruction of the environment? Conspicuous consumption? Heard of those?

Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington.

Earmarks are almost always inserted by a member of Congress without any notice to other members, and without a chance for Congress as a whole to debate a particular earmark as they relate to national priorities.

Considering community support and cost-benefit analysis, I have supported earmarks for projects of high public purpose involving such areas as higher education, alternative energy, transportation, medical research and military infrastructure.

We were endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We were not endowed by the Federal Government. We were not endowed by entitlements. We were not endowed by pork barrel spending; we were not endowed by budgetary earmarks.

If you look at history we've had since I've been in office, in an environment where we haven't had earmarks, we've still been able to get tens of millions of dollars for McLennan County.

There's no doubt about it, earmarks are not very popular. There are good earmarks and bad earmarks. The good earmarks are the ones I get for my district.

You know, there's nothing in 'E.T.' that earmarks it as really '80s.

I think we ought to ban earmarks. I think we ought to give citizens the opportunity to designate up to 10 percent of their federal income tax toward debt reduction. If we did that, we would reduce our debt by $95 billion a year.

I am convinced that I do not want to give up more power to the White House, whether it's George Bush or Barack Obama. And I'm going to fight as hard as I can against President Obama on these earmarks and my Republican colleagues who hate to vote for them, but love to get them.

The U.S. Senate does not allow legislative provisions to be included in appropriations bills, for much the same reason that most Americans are concerned about earmarks: it creates a slippery slope by which lobbyists and special interest groups can sneak provisions into large, must-pass legislation.