I wonder how much the earmarks amount to looks like business as usual.
Senate spending bill contains thousands of earmarks
snippet
The bill includes $18 million for two nonprofits associated with deceased Democrats, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. John P. Murtha; $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; and $6 million for a rural Iowa school program named after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) epitomizes the conflicted nature of the debate. Formerly a member of the committee that doles out earmarks, McConnell reluctantly embraced a moratorium on the practice last month to send a signal that Republicans are serious about curbing spending.
Yet the legislation includes provisions requested this year by McConnell, including $650,000 for a genetic technology center at the University of Kentucky, according to an analysis of the bill by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog.
Saying he was now “vigorously in opposition” to the legislation, McConnell said Tuesday that rushed consideration of the bill “here on Christmas Eve” compelled him to try to block the bill through a filibuster. “I’m going to vote against things that arguably would benefit my state. I do not think this is the appropriate way to run the Senate,” he said.
But McConnell, like other new earmark opponents, stopped short of asking for his projects to be removed from the bill.
In full
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/14/AR2010121405271.html?hpid=topnews
I heard McConnell give the excuse that his earmark had been promised long before he agreed to stop earmarks. I think it’s a pretty lame excuse. (As in lame-duck) Maybe these guys need some kind of Ten Step program like alcoholics have to break the addiction!