A vow to vote down their own earmarks

Source: Washington Post

A vow to vote down their own earmarks

By Philip Rucker and Paul Kane
Thursday, December 16, 2010

The port city of Pascagoula on Mississippi's Gulf Coast wants to build a beach promenade, with new benches, lush landscaping and a lighted pathway for joggers, cyclists and dog walkers.

So the municipality of 24,000 hired a pair of Washington lobbyists. The city shelled out $40,000 a year, according to public records, to retain Jeffrey Brooks and Wayne Weidie. They are former top aides to Gulf Coast congressmen and frequent donors to Mississippi's elected officials.

The lobbyists parlayed their connections and know-how to secure a $900,000 earmark for the beach promenade development in the $1.2 trillion spending bill introduced this week in the Senate. The earmark was one of hundreds sponsored by Mississippi's two Republican senators, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker.

While Cochran is among Capitol Hill's unabashed spending barons, the bill has reignited the debate over earmarks - federal funding for pet projects - in part because of the more delicate situation Wicker faces: After an election in which voters seemed to demand fiscal belt tightening, he and dozens of other senators from both parties are now decrying the very earmarks they sponsored earlier in the year. Wicker, like many other GOP senators with earmarks in the bill, says he will vote against it.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/15/AR2010121507411.html

and it looked like a skit from SNL.