Some lawmakers said no to stimulus bill, but not its cash

Democrats dubbed them "highway hypocrites," the mostly Republican lawmakers who voted against last year's $862 billion economic stimulus bill but tried to get money from it for projects in their home states.

Idaho's three Republicans and sole Democrat all voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for example, yet they also championed projects that were paid for with stimulus money.

The bipartisan foursome joined to write letters that supported the work of several Idaho communities that were trying to land a piece of a highly competitive $1.5 billion transportation grant program created by the recovery act. None of the Idaho projects got any money.

However, the state did get $468 million for nuclear waste cleanup at the Idaho National Laboratory , an award that the entire delegation praised and that pushed the state, population 1.5 million, to the top tier of per-capita stimulus funding.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100228/pl_mcclatchy/3437744