Hearing the Republicans pound their chests as the anti-earmark crusaders has me laughing. I decided it was time to look for some historical data on earmarks, which ended up validating my suspicions.
First thing you will notice is that the source of this chart is from the very conservative Heritage Foundation, using data from the also very conservative Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense. I wonder if these two groups recognize what I have in the data? Look at the biggest years of earmark spending and the number of earmark bills. The two biggest years just so happen to be years that the Republican Party controlled Congress.
But apparently these groups didn’t even look at their own charts. Read the top part; “Despite pledges from President Obama and congressional leaders to curtail earmark spending, the practice has continued at previous levels”. While the number of earmarks is still high (though much less than in 2005), the cost of these projects have seen a pretty substantial drop.
So thanks to these two ultra-conservative organizations for putting into picture form something we have been trying to explain; the Republicans are the ones who love their earmarks. Just because Senator “bridge to nowhere” Ted Stevens is dead doesn’t mean we haven’t forgotten the pure waste this government saw at the hand of Republican control. Hopefully the rest of America will see through the hypocrisy of the GOP when it comes to pork barrel projects.