PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Heritage Foundation’s Andrew Grossman notes that the White House is finally showing some backbone on the railroad to nowhere. It’s even making veto noises!

Let’s hope this amounts to something. There’s much more background here, including this observation:

Keeping spending down below the President’s initial request level is important, but how that money is spent matters, too. The President should therefore threaten to veto a bill that contains any extraneous spending items–that is, anything that is not truly emergency spending. Funding for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq qualifies and is fair game for a supplemental bill. Hurricane-related funding that addresses immediate, on-the-ground needs qualifies, too. But not pork projects. Whatever its merit, the “Railroad to Nowhere,” for example, is just not an emergency need. Little, if any, of the junk that the Senate has thrown into the supplemental and is still considering adding makes the cut, either.

If it’s not an emergency need, it shouldn’t be in the supplemental. That’s a simple rule, and one that the President should enforce.

Yes. It would be political gold for the White House (which, God knows, needs it!) and it might win over some of those many disgruntled Republican voters who are otherwise likely to stay home in November.