To-may-to, to-mah-to, and other earmark observations—Part 1

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: March 11, 2009

From CNN:

A spending bill that funds the U.S. government for the rest of the budget year passed the Senate on Tuesday despite complaints about nearly $8 billion in what critics called “pork-barrel” projects.

Senators voted 62-35 to cut off debate on the $410 billion measure and passed it on a voice vote immediately afterward.

Eight. Billion. Dollars. In earmarks.

(SARCASM ALERT) Awesome!

You know, it’s getting hard to hear anything out of Congress anymore with a straight face.

I thought President Obama was going to war on wasteful spending.

Oohhhhhh. He meant next year.

Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag, said Sunday that the president will sign the omnibus bill, which includes nearly 9,000 so-called pork-barrel projects. In doing so, he used a nice little analogy about a baseball game:

(Orszag) argued that the White House had little choice but to support the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, which it inherited from the previous administration. The bill would keep the government running through 2009.

“This is like your relief pitcher coming into the ninth inning and wanting to redo the whole game,“ Orszag said. “Next year we’re going to be the starting pitcher, and the game’s going to be completely different.“

Yeah ... no.

Mark Impomeni writes for AOL:

It is technically true that the omnibus bill is “last year’s business” in the sense that it provides fiscal year 2008 funding for federal agencies, which Congress never got around to completing. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The bill was introduced and debated last month, under Obama’s watch, and contains increased funding for Obama Administration priorities. Some would say that makes the president as responsible for the bill’s contents as the Democratic Congressional leaders who allowed the appropriations bills to lapse last year and the omnibus to be loaded up with earmarks.

Yes. Some would say that—not only because it’s true, but because Obama is the bill’s last stop. If we’re sticking with Orszag’s goofy baseball analogy, Obama can veto that bill and call a do-over. He can reschedule the whole game.

But he won’t.

So, in the meantime, taxpayers are left with another awful budget that will funnel their money to things like digitizing and editing the Buffalo Bill Historical Center’s Cody, Wy., collection; “educational programs” at the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu and parking garages all across America.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, told CNN: “It is in America’s best interest to close the book on the last administration and let the new one hit the ground running.“

(This just in from the I-Can’t-Believe-The-Nerve-Of-That-Guy Department: The Polynesian Voyaging Society earmark was sponsored by ... Daniel Inouye.)

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post.