McCain Says He No Longer Objects To Earmarks, Just The ‘Process’
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has repeatedly pledged that if elected president, he “will veto every bill with earmarks.” But in recent months, McCain has slipped further and further away from that promise:– After ThinkProgress pointed out that military housing and aid to Israel, McCain said that he would make an exception for certain projects.
– On April 24, McCain backtracked from his sweeping pledge, saying he would now judge spending cuts “on the basis of need.”
– McCain has repeatedly used earmark-funded projects and venues as backdrops to his campaign events.
Yesterday, McCain held a health care event at the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, PA. While there he met Mary, a woman with ovarian cancer who was treated “in a $80 million clinical trial program funded by an earmark.” Confronted with this “human face of earmark spending,” McCain again backed away from his campaign rhetoric:
McCain praised the woman’s treatment and later said some earmarks were clearly worthy.
“It’s the process I object to,” McCain told reporters. “We need to start over from scratch.” […]
“When you earmark in the middle of the night you have no budgetary constraints,” he said.
As Politico’s Ben Smith notes, “That’s one thing about spending cuts: Much harder when you get to the details.”
Here’s the problem with McCain’s constant flipping: The reason the senator has said he opposes earmarks is because they are fiscally irresponsible. “No is always the right answer to wasteful spending,” according to McCain. Similarly, his campaign aides like to tout the costs McCain will supposedly save taxpayers by getting rid of all earmarks.
So now, if McCain is only opposed to the “process” and willing to fund some “worthy” earmarks, which programs will he cut to come up with that $95 billion in savings he has promised? So far, his campaign hasn’t been willing to give any specifics.
However he doesn’t seem to be above shameless pandering for votes
ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending. ADVERTISEMENT
Federal investigators cite undersize steel plates as the “critical factor” in the collapse of the bridge. Heavy loads of construction materials on the bridge also contributed to the disaster that injured 145 people on Aug. 1, according to preliminary findings by the National Transportation Safety Board.
“The bridge in Minneapolis didn’t collapse because there wasn’t enough money,” McCain told reporters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.”
McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, regularly rails against “earmarks,” the pet projects that lawmakers tuck into spending bills, such as the proposed $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.
The Arizona senator says he would eliminate earmarks, estimated at $18 billion last year, and would make each project compete in the regular congressional funding process.
“I think there is a long, long list of earmarks which went to unnecessary and unwanted projects that I think should have gone to the bridge in Minnesota,” McCain said. “I don’t know whether it would have gone or not, but if you’re spending $223 million on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it …”
McCain also criticized earmarks for projects in New Orleans that didn’t help protect the city from Hurricane Katrina, saying a congressional earmark helped to dig a channel outside New Orleans that helped speed the hurricane into the city.
McCain said such projects “have everything to do with the power and influence of an individual congressman or senator and has nothing to do with the actual transportation needs of the United States.”
On the same day, McCain was confronted with an earmark he did consider worthy. During a forum at Lehigh Valley Hospital, he met a woman with ovarian cancer who was treated in a clinical trial funded with $80 million in congressional earmarks.
The hospital was showing off an electronic medical records system that is virtually paper-free.
McCain insisted he was not trying to have it both ways and said that deserving projects can get money through regular channels.
“It’s the process I object to,” he said. “I’m sure that I can give you a list of projects the Mafia funds, and they would probably be good projects. But I can’t give you a justification for the Mafia. I can’t give you a justification for the corruption that’s been bred which has sent members of Congress to the federal prison,” he said.
“Look, if we reform the process, then the money will take care of itself. It’s a corrupt process,” he said.
Yup it is corrupt and you’re one of the worst
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