This has to be a record for the backbencher from Missouri’s first district! As usual, whining, with his hand out, crying discrimination. Good grief!

By Jonathan Allen

African-American lawmakers are exploring ways to get more appropriations earmarks, which disproportionately go to districts represented by their white colleagues.

Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., broached the idea of expanding the House Appropriations Committee at Wednesday’s meeting of the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus.

Clay’s proposal, the first of what are expected to be numerous CBC approaches to closing the earmarks gap, calls for creating two new spending panel seats to be filled by black lawmakers.

A Congressional Quarterly examination of earmarked dollars showed that they are distributed disproportionately, with extra money going to appropriators, leaders and members in swing districts. White Democrats secured on average twice as much earmarked money for their districts as black House members in the House-passed fiscal 2008 appropriations bills, according to CQ’s analysis of data compiled by the group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“It’s a glaring disparity,” Clay said after the caucus meeting.

More black appropriators “would be just a step to get at the inequities in the process,” he said.

Clay did not suggest that minority lawmakers are subjected to discrimination based on their race or ethnicity. Read more…