{"id":13686,"date":"2007-11-22T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2007-11-22T19:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13686.html"},"modified":"2007-11-22T14:00:15","modified_gmt":"2007-11-22T19:00:15","slug":"republicans-decry-earmarks-while-bringing-home-the-pork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/republicans-decry-earmarks-while-bringing-home-the-pork\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans decry earmarks — while bringing home the pork"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

It’s kind of funny given that Blunt and Putnam personally made the spending bills more expensive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s almost as if House Republican leaders are some kind of hypocrites.
\n
\nIndeed, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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):<\/p>\n

“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. \u2014 $8.4 million for the University of Louisville Research Foundation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Something to keep in mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}