GOP Faces Obstacle in Earmark Fight: Themselves

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GOP Faces Obstacle in Earmark Fight: Themselves
By Bennett Roth, CQ Staff


Congressional Republican leaders hope to win back the public’s trust with opposition to earmark-laden spending pushed by Democrats.

But they face a significant obstacle: GOP members who want funding for their own pet projects as well.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, is one of those who eschews earmarks such as those in the fiscal 2009 omnibus (HR 1105) the Senate cleared Tuesday. He called on President Obama to veto the bill.

“This legislation is loaded with 9,000 unscrutinized earmarks – the kind of secretive spending the president promised to oppose – and includes the largest non-emergency discretionary spending increase since the Carter years,” Boehner said in a statement.

But his message, which Obama was likely to ignore, was muddied by the fact that many of those pet projects were for Republicans.

Of the 178 Republican House members, only 39 did not have earmarks in the omnibus, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Three Democrats did not accept earmarks, which are funding attached to appropriations bills for specific projects sought by lawmakers.

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