A Taxpayer Victory! Thank You!

Feb 2, 2011 | 3 min read | Print Article

With the Senate's begrudging acceptance of an earmark moratorium, taxpayers just achieved a well-earned victory on the road to fiscal accountability. Thank you, taxpayers, for making this possible.

Dear Fellow Taxpayer:

Give yourself a pat on the back.

You just scored a win on the long road to fiscal responsibility. There will be no earmarks for the next two years.

The House won't make them. President Obama says he'll veto any that come to his desk. And now the Senate has seen “the handwriting is clearly on the wall” and begrudgingly agreed.

Let me repeat that. Seven years since the Bridge to Nowhere, and six years from a peak of more than 15,000 earmarks costing over $20 billion, there will be no earmarks.

This is big. Don't listen to the detractors dismissing this as irrelevant, a distraction, or just a pittance.

Fixing our nation's fiscal fiasco is a marathon, not a sprint. But you will never reach the finish line with your feet propped up on the couch. Ending the earmark favor factory, even temporarily, is Congress and the President's first step off that cozy couch of deficits, debt, and deferred decisions.

Congress and the President now must roll up their collective sleeves and get to work. And since they're no longer sifting through thousands of earmark requests to pick winners and losers, they've got the time to design transparent, merit-based, competitive, and formula systems to make responsible spending decisions.

Thank you for making this possible.

Washington never would have sobered up to the problems caused by its earmarking habit without the intervention of taxpayers like you. You helped Taxpayers for Common Sense make earmark a household word. You helped force Congress to bring the at times unseemly race for earmarks from the backrooms and shadows into the light of day. And now you've led Congress and the President to finally acknowledge that taxpayers are fed up with this corrupting, unfair, and irresponsible way of handling our tax dollars.

So, thank you.

Please enjoy this victory. But steel yourself for the road ahead, so we can make this just the first of many successes.

Sincerely,