More GOP Hypocrisy on Earmarks!

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

The Atlantic Wire has been rounding up the hypocrisy over the past week as it seems clear that maybe the teajadis find something useful about being able to funnel money back to their Districts, after all. These articles round up some of the reporting or blogging being done showing that these guys can’t even manage to live up to the easy stuff — like No Earmarks:

Liberals: $1 Billion Earmark Request Reveals Tea Party ‘Hypocrisy’

They Were ‘For Earmarks Before They Were Against Them’ quips Time writer Alex Altman who proceeds to note an apparently contradictory action by Tea Party caucus leader Michele Bachman: “This is one more example of how rhetoric about the importance of fiscal austerity often doesn’t align with reality. This week Bachmann has denounced Congress’ $1.2 billion settlement with black farmers as ‘scamming the federal taxpayers.’ As the Minneapolis Star-Tribune points out, her family farm has received more than $250,000 in federal farm subsidies over the past decade.”

Republicans Backpedal on Earmarks–They’re Useful After All

You gotta love this strategy — just redefine what an Earmark is:

Let’s Just Redefine ‘Earmark’ Politico also quotes Phil Roe, a Republican representative from Tennessee, who says that there are earmarks and then there are earmarks. “It’s like what beauty is … Everyone knows what a bridge to nowhere is, or an airport that lands no airplanes, or a statue to you –everyone knows that’s bad. It’s easy to say what an earmark isn’t, rather than what an earmark is.”

A description of the slime:

It’s rank hypocrisy, really. First, Republicans try to claim their fiscal conservative bona fides with a purely symbolic and utterly pointless ban on earmarking. Then, after it passes, they turn around and redefine what an ‘earmark’ is so that they can continue funneling money to their districts. It stands as proof not only of their own phoniness, but also of the fact that ‘earmarking’ is part and parcel of a large government that spends a lot of money. No matter how you try to ban it, legislators will always find a way to get money and government to their district and their supporters.

Read both of them. And once again you’ll see these same hypocrites wringing their hands on how to get re-elected if they aren’t delivering goodies. Which is not much of a good signal for their program-cutting cojones, either. They’ll just work at cutting the legs out from under the people who can least afford it and transferring more tax money into the pockets of those that bought them.