« Blogs, Politics And Public Relations | Main | Smackdown Of The Right-Wing Blogosphere »

CapitolLink: A Porkbuster Blogs For Porkbusters

Sen. John McCain was a porkbuster before Porkbusters were cool in the conservative blogosphere. The Arizona Republican has been irritating his colleagues by fighting earmarks in the federal budget for years.

I featured McCain's efforts in a March 2004 special report on technology-related pork for National Journal's Technology Daily. His efforts were the focus of my lead, which read like this:

When John McCain went on the Senate floor in January for one of his regular rants against "pork barrel" spending, the Arizona Republican focused his ire on the types of special-interest earmarks that have outraged budget watchers for decades. He decried the $1 million for the Mormon cricket infestation in Utah, $238,000 for the National Wild Turkey Federation and $200,000 to North Pole, Alaska, for what McCain called "elves and others."

But crickets, turkeys and imaginary elves aside, much of the money that lawmakers earmark for their states and districts these days goes toward technology-related projects. The projects that McCain did not specifically mention include $3 million for the Center for Criminal Justice Technology in Maryland, $2.75 million for the Nogales CyberPort Project in McCain's home state, and $2 million for computer training of at-risk youth at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America in Atlanta.

National Journal's Technology Daily reviewed the spending bills and conference reports for fiscal 2004 and identified hundreds of such earmarks involving information technology, telecommunications and related fields. The projects range in value from as little as $16,000 for interactive displays at the National Distance Running Hall of Fame to $9.4 million for an information-sharing database in the South Carolina Judicial Department, and many of them have multimillion-dollar price tags.

All told, the value approaches the $1 billion mark -- and could exceed it if vague earmarks for "equipment," "upgrades," "research" and the like were counted.

Since then, the Porkbusters have stormed onto the scene to annoy lawmakers like Sens. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, perhaps more than McCain ever could. Now McCain has joined forces with the blogosphere's budget hawks in a guest post at the Porkbusters site.

"The total number of earmarks in spending bills has grown from 4,126 in 1994, the last year of Democratic control, to 14,404 in 2004," McCain wrote. "That's a 240 percent increase in ten years time. In dollars, the cost borne by taxpayers for earmarks has nearly doubled. That's not a record Ronald Reagan would have been proud of. And it's not a record Reagan Republicans should be proud of today. We need to stop this ... now."

The entry has generated several comments -- apparently a practice that worried McCain, who irked bloggers not long ago with an ill-received joke.

"I have never blogged before," he wrote. "But I understand readers can leave comments on each post and that these comments can be rather, ahem, blunt. So I am happy to entertain any questions, comments or insults you might have for me at this time."

Hopefully, that joke will not be over the bloggers' heads like his last one.

Posted by Danny | 01:11 PM

Comments

Well, I'm commenting on a dead topic I'm sure (July 3rd comment on June 28th post) , but I'm still here before McCain, any staffer, or even a troll caliming to be a McCain staffer has responsed to any comments, questions, or insults from his "guest post" on Porkbusters.

His idea of entertaining comments and questions is to have his say and walk away? Well, typical politician in any case, hopefully nobody expected better.

Gekkobear | 07.03.06 02:04 PM

Post a Comment