Politics & Power Quote by Harry Reid

Reid is doing something politicians rarely do cleanly: he’s arguing for less power for the institution that can most easily launder congressional cowardice - the White House - while simultaneously skewering his own colleagues for their double life on spending. The line is built to sound bipartisan ("whether it's George Bush or Barack Obama"), not because Reid is above party, but because the accusation he’s making needs to survive the usual tribal defenses. He’s warning that executive power is a ratchet: every crisis and every convenient delegation tightens it, and Congress never quite takes the authority back.

The earmarks jab is the knife. Earmarks were the classic Washington Rorschach test: publicly, a synonym for corruption; privately, a mechanism for members to deliver tangible wins and maintain influence inside a sprawling federal bureaucracy. Reid’s subtext is that Republicans want the moral theater of fiscal purity without forfeiting the political benefits. “Hate to vote for them, but love to get them” captures the hypocrisy in a rhythm simple enough to travel: it’s scandal as slogan.

Context matters: earmark battles were really proxy fights over who gets to direct federal spending and claim credit for it. Reid frames earmarks not just as pork, but as a constitutional power struggle. If Congress renounces tools like earmarks, it doesn’t eliminate spending; it surrenders leverage to the executive branch and unelected agencies. The quote works because it turns an inside-baseball budget fight into a broader argument about accountability: if you want the goodies, you should have to own the vote.