Throw us in that br'er patch, Representative Obey

David Obey, the powerful head of the Appropriations Committee sounds very tense these days. Despite Democratic promises about changing the system and making it more transparent, he just can't seem to get a handle on those pesky earmarks. Representatives submit so many that his staff can't check them out, so they're just going to throw them in at the end of the process in conference committee. Somehow, they won't have time to get their work done before the bill comes to the floor the first time, but they'll have time after it goes to confernece. Suspicious minds think that this is just Obey's way of getting earmarks in without any committee or floor debate of the specific measure.

And Obey is getting huffy about any attempts to call attention to specific earmarks as was done with the Bridge to Nowhere last year.

House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., today outlined how earmarks will be disclosed before conference, and warned that if Republicans “demagogue” the issue there might be no earmarks in the fiscal 2008 bills.

Well, as Instapundit says,

Bring it on! Threaten some more!

Being chairman of the Appropriations Committee isn't the fun that it used to be, is it? Well, I hope the Republicans are willing to let Obey throw them in that there br'er patch. Demagogue away and dare him to carry out his blustering threat to just get rid of all earmarks altogether.

Perhaps this is why, as Mark Tapscott notes, Congress has the lowest approval rating in the past decade with only 27% registering approval of how they're doing their job. Conservatives, of course, don't like the job of Congress under Pelosi and Reid, but liberals don't like them much either. Jules Crittenden notes all that Congress hasn't accomplished from stopping the surge to passing an immigration bill to passing a meaningless vote of no confidence in Attorney General Gonzales and calls them a "lame duck Congress."