DEPARTMENT OF POTS AND KETTLES.... (Updated: McCain and Kyl's earmarks hypocrisy)

DEPARTMENT OF POTS AND KETTLES....

For all the recent Republican talk about wasteful spending and unnecessary earmarks, the GOP is more than pulling its own weight when it comes to the very practice they claim to hate.


It's one of the reasons I find Republican hyperventilating over the earmarks more than a little disingenuous. McCain was ranting on the floor yesterday, blaming President Obama for earmarks McCain's fellow senators stuffed into the bill. Perhaps, before McCain castigates the White House, he can spend some time talking to his own Republican colleagues about their notion of fiscal responsibility.

He can start with his fellow Arizonan, Sen. Jon Kyl (R). It was Kyl who complained bitterly about spending in the stimulus package, which he described as "billions of dollars of earmarks and pork." It's the same Kyl who requested $118 million in earmarks in the omnibus bill.

Asked about the hypocrisy, Kyl told Fox News over the weekend, "I would suggest that they're not earmarks under the definition, because we have a specific definition."

Of course he does. How convenient.

Senate Rejects McCain Earmark Amendment to Omnibus

By Paul Kane

The Senate rejected in bipartisan fashion today a proposal by John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, that would have flattened government spending and gutted almost $7.7 billion worth of narrow spending projects inserted into catch-all funding legislation that will keep federal agencies running through September.

Receiving just 32 votes for his amendment, McCain was defeated as 54 members of the Senate Democratic caucus and nine Republicans opposed his proposal to leave funding at its current levels and strip the 9,000 congressionally designated projects commonly known as earmarks. Instead, the Senate remains on track to pass the $410 billion legislation, which cobbles together nine of the dozen annual spending bills that are leftover from last year's congressional agenda. The current short-term funding resolution expires Saturday, so Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is trying to get the omnibus legislation approved without any amendments, allowing it to go to the White House for President Obama's signature without having to send it back to the House, which approved the measure last week.

Obama, who campaigned on a pledge that he would roughly halve the number of earmarks in appropriation measures, has said he will sign the omnibus bill while indicating to Democratic leaders last week that he would like to see more reform and transparency in how these provisions are handled in the spending bills up for consideration later this year.

McCain ridiculed Obama for saying he would sign the legislation, arguing that the money would be better spent on more meaningful tasks at a time of national and international crisis. "So much -- so much -- for the promise of change," he said in a floor speech yesterday.

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