Dick Armey on NPR’s Morning Edition
September 1st, 2006 by Brendan SteinhauserÂÂ
Click here to listen to Armey discuss earmarks on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Armey told NPR:
“I think it’s two to three times worse than when I was majority leader. We’ve had three years where you had Tom DeLay, who actually advocated this kind of activity. Pushed it along, where I repressed it…
The House will pass a spending bill. The Senate will pass a comparable bill. They go to a meeting of the two bodies called a conference committee. And then you’ll find special allocations or earmarks put in at that time in the dark of night and actually aren’t seen by anybody else in the legislative body. That’s, I think, inappropriate behavior…
The leadership will sit down and have a meeting. The Congressional campaign committee will come in and he’ll say, ‘I’ve got these five or six people that are in trouble, and this is the project that would attend to their improved election,’ and the leadership sits down and says we can’t afford to lose their seats, and we’ll put in the orders to the appropriators to put those projects in.”
