Republicans decry earmarks — while bringing home the pork

November 22, 2007

The whining from congressional Republicans about Democratic earmark-filled spending bills has rung hollow for quite a while. Given the spending of the GOP-majority years, it’s not as if Republicans have room to complain now.

But complain they have. House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), for example, lambasted the “Democrats’ Labor-H Spending Nightmare” before Bush vetoed the labor, health and human services and education spending bill last week. Blunt also condemned the “spending spree” hidden in the transportation, housing and urban development bill. House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), meanwhile, mocked the labor, health and education bill as a “billion-dollar earmark bonanza.”

It’s kind of funny given that Blunt and Putnam personally made the spending bills more expensive.

[W]hile Blunt and Putnam fired away, they may have quietly ached for the sorry fate of those two bills. The dear, departed “Labor-H” nightmare included more than $1.4 million in projects secured by Blunt, including $400,000 for the purchase of equipment by Joplin, Mo.’s Freeman Health System, $100,000 for the Joplin School District and another $100,000 for a college preparatory pilot program at Missouri State University.

Putnam’s central Florida district was due for $1.25 million in federal largess, including advanced manufacturing training programs for Polk Community College in Winter Haven and funding for Florida Southern College in Lakeland to “digitize holdings and create an online exhibit.”

Blunt has nearly $2 million in pet projects — or earmarks — socked away for Missouri in the transportation and housing bill that Bush has vowed to veto, including $1 million to bolster midfield terminal construction at Springfield-Branson National Airport and $350,000 for streetscape improvements in Joplin.

A veto of the transportation bill would also zap $1.5 million in earmarks for Putnam’s district, including lane-widening funds for a U.S. highway in the district, community center construction money for Polk County and construction dollars for a library that would store historic documents of Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College.

It’s almost as if House Republican leaders are some kind of hypocrites.

Indeed, as long as we’re on the subject, let’s also not forget who placed the most expensive earmarks in the labor, health and education bill Bush vetoed: Republicans.

According to the November 6 edition of CQ Today, the two largest individual earmarks in the bill were placed by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

“However, much of the ‘pork’ Boehner complained about was requested by Republicans. Aside from the ‘National Programs and Activities,’ the single biggest earmark in the Labor-HHS-Education section of the bill belongs to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., who won $9.3 million for the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The second-largest was requested by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — $8.4 million for the University of Louisville Research Foundation.”

Something to keep in mind.

“It’s almost as if House Republican leaders are some kind of hypocrites.”

Oh good I get to give out the Thanksgiving “DUH”

Enjoy your time with family and friends.

  • In Missouri Blunt is in contrast to Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill who campaigns to stop earmarks and make funding for projects more direct as a way of reigning in wasteful government spending. The Branson airport is just to accommodate tourism and could be easily paid for by the huge profits made by the Branson community.

    Blunt’s Joplin earmarks could also find the money they need by other means than federal tax dollars as I’m sure most of the other earmarks attached to these bills could find other ways of obtaining funding besides attached to bills aimed at necessities.

    I’m sure all these earmarks are justifiable but what does millions for a town in MO. mean to people living in Colorado? Asking them to pay for it would undoubtedly raise questions in their minds.
    Somehow this practice of earmarks has gotten totally out of hand (the last republican congress spent like drunken sailors) and needs to be scrutinized but republicans only complain when they are not in power. It’s always the dems who have to bail the country out after republican spending sprees. Then they complain over increased taxes that get used to pay for their spending.

    Then their priorities are ass backwards…increased defense spending, decreased social programs, Money for increased tourism accommodations but no money the homeless or health care for children. They figure big profits from military spending but no big profits spending money on education, or health care for the poor. It’s the art of self-centered politics only now it has gotten too far out of balance.

  • An acquaintance of mine — a republican who’s rabidly against pork-barrel spending in certain years — says (when its republican earmarking that’s in question), that larding the budget with pet projects has as long and venerable a tradition as Magna Carta and habeas corpus; get rid of one, you might as well get rid of the others. Since we’re on our way to get rid of habeas corpus (with few objections from her), I’ll have to remember to ask her if her position vis-a-vis pork has been adjusted too.

  • You are a cult member. I belong to a religion.

    My earmarks are vital projects without which the very foundations of western civilization will crumble. Your earmarks are pork.

    IOKIYAR.

  • Okie’s right (#5). No one or party has a corner on hypocrisy. The only difference is Republicans piss and moan about Democrat pork, while Democrats stay quiet.

  • I suppose many of us have seen the invitation to the South to secede again.
    It would leave most of the liberal, affluent states of the union in command of a nation not weighed down by the states with the worst schools and economies in the country.

    In that spirit, what would happen if Congress REALLY embraced fiscal responsibility and cut off all earmarks including their own. Who would suffer most? Red states that don’t have strong economies to grow their own agricultural research centers with liberal high state taxes and thriving business sectors and strong public schools to educate those that staff them.

    Do the Republicans REALLY want to see the result of a tight fisted Fed?
    Be careful what you wish for, Norquist.

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