margin. mike is on capitol hill following this situation for us. mike, the last time around they didn t even bring it for a vote. in the end they said we re too far away. could this go the same way? could there be a snacenario whe they don t call a vote here? reporter: absolutely and the rule of thumb is once you put something on the floor and put all your energy into it or at least try to get it on the floor, you go through the round of arm twisting, cajoling, calls from the white house, trying to figure out what it is you can give people, any side legislation, not necessarily pork barrel projects, doesn t work that way so much anymore around here but people have policy concerns that you can address in other ways. trying to find that sweet spot, trying to find how to get a few more members and house g.o.p. leaders say they re close. i got to tell you, steve, the longer this goes, the less likely it is they re going to have success. once you try to put it on the
but this hour the still republican-led house of representatives could move to undo that ban. our senior political reporter manu raju joins us from capitol hill right now. why do republicans want to overturn that ban? the ban on these appropriations called earmarks? reporter: right, wolf. actually, a lot of lawmakers from both parties believe they ve seeded too much authority to the executive branch eliminating this kind of spending what critics cog pork barrel projects. saying it s a job of congress to direct that money to key priorities, whether it s bridges, roads, other projects back home in their districts, and in their states, and also believe politically it helps them. they can point to funding they ve brought back home when they campaign for re-election. the critics, there are ample size of them, particularly conservative critics, believe that this breeds corruption, conflicts of interest. special interests could get money, as well as donors, and
we in the press are the worst at it or the best. we bad mouthed pork barrel projects. we backed the smobring back rooms. they were to cajole, encourage members to behave. there s a carrot and stick. now they don t have it anymore. and so he s lost a lot of that authority. bring back those earmarks. and there s no more smoke-filled rooms. these people are playing out the politics of this that used to be in the back room in political ads on television in other people s districts, right? this is also the strings on this, the master puppeer puppet all of this are on k street. conservative groups involved which we don t see. when the heritage action fund which is a pretty powerful
you re right, doesn t jibe with this. remember this? yep. i m going to make it impossible for congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one is looking. wait a minute. nothing happened. i guess he thinks we re not looking or we and are don t care. republicans, mitchell mcconnell, marco rubio part of that bill this is the price of doing business but the ends justify the means. wasn t that the argument for all the sandy aid as well, and this is the way we do business and it will benefit. blah blah blah. it s always the excuse, always the argue; we have to do something bad in order to do something that is good. so why don t we just do something that is best and act like responsible people who govern with an understanding that the constitution doesn t give us the liberty to go out and exact money from some people, redistribute it to others because
54%. a clear majority said he is more interested in growing government. a bit more than a third say it is more about reducing the debt. has either party or a a majority in either party in your view committed itself to tackling trillion dollars deficits? you know, bill, i m frustrated with both parties root now. just in the last ten years, go back to around the year 2000, the budget was $2 trillion and now we are close to $4 trillion. we have seen a doubling of the budget and that has happened under republican president george bush and happened under barack obama. so i do think you can blame both parties for this. i was frustrated just this week, bill, because as you know this past week the congress just passed a $60 billion relief bill for sandy. now, everybody wants to help the victims of that terrible storm but guess what, only about a third of that money was for the victims of the storm. the other $40 billion or so was pork barrel projects. the same old thing in