9,000 Earmarks

Do you need $200,000 for tatoo removal? How about money for Maine lobster research? How about $473,000 for the National Council of La Raza, a radical hispanic group that would like to remove the southwest from the United States and return it to Mexico?

All that and more can be found in the Omnibus Spending Bill:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks.
“We need earmark reform,” Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. “And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”

President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that’s riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts on Capitol Hill to curtail the practice.

The bill will contain about 9,000 earmarks totaling $5 billion, congressional officials say. Many of the earmarks — loosely defined as local projects inserted by members of Congress — were inserted last year as the spending bills worked their way through various committees.

So while Obama and McCain were slamming earmarks on the camp aign trail, House and Senate members — Democrats and Republicans — were slapping them into spending bills.

“It will be a little embarrassing for the president if he signs a bill with that many earmarks on it,” said Stan Collender, a veteran Washington budget analyst.

Does anyone really think Obama is going to fight Congressional Dems over earmarks? Never happen.

He'll sign it.