Rep. Joe Pitts, a Republican who represents Pennsylvania's 16th Congressional District, joined 18 fellow Republicans on a letter calling for a one-year moratorium on earmark requests for Republican members.

The letter calls for an immediate Republican Conference meeting to discuss the moratorium.

"Out of control earmarks are a symptom of our larger inability to balance the federal budget and we cannot wait any longer to control spending," Pitts said in a written statement. "We need to come together as a conference and take a stand for fiscal responsibility."

Pitts has a history of standing against out-of-control spending, voting against one-third of appropriations bills when Republicans controlled Congress because they spent too much.

Rep. Pitts has not requested earmarks since 2007.

Read more about the moratorium effort in Roll Call.

Citizens Against Government Waste (the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government) has released its list of nominees for 2009 Porker of the Year.

The six finalists were chosen by CAGW staff from among 12 worthy Porkers of the Month for 2009, and voters are free to pick anyone else they believe deserves this dubious achievement award.

You can vote online at www.cagw.org/porkeroftheyear/

"Porker of the Month" and "Porker of the Year" are dubious honors given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers, according to CAGW.

The candidates are:

-- Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) - Named July's Porker, Rep. Carnahan was caught on videotape by a vigilant citizen blogger at a town hall meeting held in St. Louis where he grossly misrepresented the costs associated with the controversial healthcare reforms bills under consideration in Congress.

-- Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) - Named August's Porker, Rep. Abercrombie ranked first in earmarks in the House in fiscal year (FY) 2009 with 44 projects worth $256.8 million; he routinely abuses an already-stretched Pentagon budget to reward favored contractors and supports funding a wasteful and unnecessary alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter.

-- House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) - Named March's Porker, Chairman Frank had expressed outrage over reports that insurance giant and TARP recipient AIG had distributed millions in bonuses to its executives. The Chairman has made ample contributions to the nation's current economic meltdown, spending years defending the activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and once telling The New York Times that the companies were not facing "any kind of financial crisis."

-- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) - Named October's Porker, the four-term Texas senator claims to be a fiscal conservative, but requested 149 projects worth $1.6 billion for authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010, exemplifying the tiresome hypocrisy of some members of Congress who claim the badge of fiscal conservatism while continuing to abscond with billions of dollars in pork.

-- Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood - Named January's Porker, the then newly-minted Transportation Secretary and long-time porker in the House was about to preside over the distribution of tens of billions of tax dollars for transportation projects in the stimulus package passed in February, 2009.

-- Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) - Named June's Porker, Rep. Waters provoked a tussle with House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) over her intention to obtain an earmark for the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center, a facility within the Los Angeles school system, reminding taxpayers that members of Congress still have not banned the practice naming projects after themselves.

The Libertarian Party is blasting Barack Obama for breaking more promises by holding a secret signing ceremony of the $400+ billion pork-spending bill approved by Congressional Democrats.

From a press released issued today by the Libertarian National Committee:

America's third largest party asked Wednesday why President Obama enacted the $490 billion FY09 omnibus spending and its over 8,500 earmarks behind closed doors, and despite campaign promises to end earmark abuse.

"President Obama's decision to hide from the media while signing this bill isn't just a violation of his promise of transparency, it's an attempt to avoid questions about breaking another promise to end earmark abuse," said Libertarian National Committee Communications Director Donny Ferguson.

"He promised to end earmarks. He promised transparency. He promised fiscal responsibility. He didn't mean a word of it. More and more Americans realize his crippling taxes and crushing debt are prescriptions for prolonged economic suffering. Now he has to hide behind closed doors to sign his pork-stuffed plan to explode wasteful spending," said Ferguson.

Libertarians support an economic renewal plan centered on tax and regulatory relief for employers, preserving the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that blunted previous recessions and greatly simplifying the tax code for employers and taxpayers. Polls such as Rasmussen show voters prefer the Libertarian approach over the Republican and Democrat plans to increase government spending.

You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.LP.org

Barack Obama announced he will sign the $410 billion stop-gap budget bill approved by the Democratic Congress even though the bill contains billions in pork-barrel projects.

Obama acknowledge the earmarks, saying it was an "imperfect" bill, but he was forced to sign it to keep the government going.

He also confessed that he was breaking his own campaign promise to eliminate earmarks. Apparently, he had his fingers crossed when he made that promise.

Obama said "99 percent" of the bill is legitimate spending, so that's good enough for him as he lowers the standard for reform and ethical government even further.

In his defense, Obama said earmarks have been part of the Washington culture for decades, including the years Republicans controlled Congress. In other words, two wrongs do make a right, according to Obama.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele had this to say about the Democratic spending package, loaded with more than 8,500 pork projects:

"President Obama will break his pledge to go through every line of the budget if he signs this omnibus spending bill. Like the stimulus bill and budget, this spending bill contains too much taxing, spending, and borrowing. Left unchecked, the Democrats' spending spree will grow our national debt and ultimately result in more taxes. Hard-working Americans deserve better from its leaders than the Democrats' tax-and-spend agenda."

Obama did promise not to sign the next pork-laden budget bill Congress sends his way ... unless he changes his mind again. Welcome to the liberal world ... where principles don't matter, where 99 percent is good enough.

Moderate Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana is among a growing number of Congressional Democrats who are voicing opposition to the massive spending plans proposed by President Obama and fellow Democrats.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Bayh says the $410 billion Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 is full of wasteful spending.

"The Senate should reject this bill," Bayh writes. "If we do not, President Barack Obama should veto it."

From Bayh's column:

"The bloated omnibus requires sacrifice from no one, least of all the government. It only exacerbates the problem and hastens the day of reckoning. Voters rightly demanded change in November's election, but this approach to spending represents business as usual in Washington, not the voters' mandate.

Now is the time to win back the confidence and trust of the American people. Congress should vote "no" on this omnibus and show working families across the country that we are as committed to living within our means as they are.

Bayh says Congress has to stop contributing to the nation's economic woes by continuing to overspend.

"The economic downturn requires new policies, not more of the same," Bayh writes. "Our nation's current fiscal imbalance is unprecedented, unsustainable and, if unaddressed, a major threat to our currency and our economic vitality. The national debt now exceeds $10 trillion. This is almost double what it was just eight years ago, and the debt is growing at a rate of about $1 million a minute."

Read the full column at the newspaper's Web site.

Change? Get real. Nothing changes in Washington, D.C. Career politicians take care of their friends. If you voted for Obama because you believed he would "change" Washington, you must be feeling pretty foolish right about now.

Illinois Legislators Label O'Hare Expansion Plan as Runway to Nowhere, Tell Congress to Reject Federal Funding of Pork Project

Isn't O'Hare Airport in Chicago? Isn't Barack Obama from Chicago?

How much do you want to bet that Obama sneaks this multi-billion dollar pork project through Congress?

The new Obama motto: "The more things change, the more they stay the same"

Read more at the link below:

The Next Giant Taxpayer Pork Project is on the Runway

They just can't help themselves.

Stuffed inside the $700 billion financial bailout approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate is $1.7 billion worth of pork spending, according to the New York Post.

"Congressional deal-brookers yesterday slopped a mess of pork into the $700 billion financial rescue bill passed by the Senate last night - including a tax break for makers of kids' wooden arrows - in a bid to lure reluctant lawmakers into voting for the package," the newspaper says.

From an article by Daphne Retter:

"This is how Washington works," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. "A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage."

The special provisions include tax breaks for:

* Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.

* Puerto Rican and Virgin Is- lands rum producers - $192 million.

* Wool research.

* Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.

* Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.

* Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

Another measure inserted into the bill appears to be a bald-faced bid aimed at winning the support of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who voted against the original version when it went down in flames in the House on Monday.

That provision - a $223 million package of tax benefits for fishermen and others whose livelihoods suffered as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill - has been the subject of fervent lobbying by Alaska's congressional delegation.

Read the full story and an editorial criticizing Congressional pork in today's edition of the newspaper.

Another case where Sen. Barack Obama's rhetoric doesn't match reality. He talks about changing Washington, but the junior Senator from Illinois had no qualms about seeking pork projects for his home state during his brief time in the Senate. As for Biden, he knows how to play the game in Washington.

Republican National Committee: Obama/Biden Earmark Makeover

Check out the list of Pennsylvania members of Congress on the 2007 Congressional ratings released by the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste. It's posted today at POLICY BLOG

The citizens watchdog group keeps track of pork spending.

The worst offender is Democrat John Murtha, but several other prominent Democrats also scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to wasting taxpayer dollars.

Many of the Democrats from the Class of 2006 who promised to help clean up Washington, D.C., decided it was more advantageous to wallow in the slop instead.

Spending other people's money continues to be the favorite activity of members of Congress, according to a new study by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

For every single bill introduced to save money, the House of Representatives introduced 22 bills to spend more money and the Senate introduced 30 bills to increase spending, according to the NTUF.

The study compared spending under the 109th Congress to the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid-led 110th Congress.

The number of House spending bills (1,078) rose by over one-third since the last Congress, while Senate spending bills grew by nearly 25 percent (to 745), according to the study.

These people are addicted to spending your money. They have to be stopped. You can't go wrong by voting out an incumbent, especially the hypocritical Democrats who fooled you into voting for them in 2006.

Follow the link below for more highlights from the study.

Study: Lawmakers' Bill-Writing Habits Stall Drive for Budget Discipline