ROBERT NOVAK looks at pork for defense — and the defense of pork:
In a caucus of Republican senators, 82-year-old, six-term Sen. Ted Stevens charged that freshman Sen. Tom Coburn’s anti-pork crusade hurts the party. Stevens then removed from the final version of the Defense Department appropriations bill Coburn’s “report card” requiring the Pentagon to grade earmarks. The House passed, 394 to 22, the bill, stripped of this reform and containing some 2,800 earmarks worth $11 billion. That made a mockery of a “transparency” rule passed by the House earlier this year, supposedly intended to discourage earmarks.
“You would think that with a war and all the controversy surrounding earmarks that the appropriators would hold back a little,” said Steve Ellis of the non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense. “But with an election just weeks away, they dug into the trough to find pearls to send home to their districts.” Ellis located unauthorized spending embedded in the bill that was harder to find than ever. Republicans in Congress seem unaffected by their conservative base’s anger over pork.
Stevens, the Senate’s president pro tempore and its senior Republican, reflects a majority in both parties defending pork.
That last bit is the most depressing point. It’s insiders vs. outsiders, not Democrats vs. Republicans, and however the elections go things aren’t likely to change much because of party shifts. We need outside pressure, something that’s just beginning. We need to ratchet things up next session, whoever’s in charge.