Fact Check: McCain earmark claims examined

[SolarEnergy1]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The debate over government spending is heating up on the campaign trail and raising greater focus on which presidential candidate will really change the way Washington does business.


Sen. John McCain has criticized politicians who request millions in so-called earmarks.

1 of 2 But will that sway the American electorate?

Sen. John McCain has been a crusader against so-called earmarks and says his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, has asked for almost $1 billion in pork-barrel projects for his state in just less than four years in the Senate.

"Nearly a million dollars for every day that he's been in office! And that's change? My friends, don't be fooled," McCain said September 9.

Earmarks are requests for money by a specific legislator, usually for her or his constituency, added onto often-unrelated government spending bills.

According to the nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, Obama has asked for nearly $1 billion in earmarks during his Senate term. But the group gives him credit for disclosing his requests, which most members of Congress don't do.
Obama has not made any requests for the next fiscal year, and even when he was asking for earmarks, he was far from the worst offender, the group says.

"Just to put it into perspective, he got $98 million worth of earmarks in fiscal year 2008. Sen. [Hillary] Clinton got more than $300 million in earmarks, and Sen. [Thad] Cochran, Republican of the [Senate] Appropriations Committee, got $800 million in earmarks," Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense said.


Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, doesn't come close to that. But Biden also has never disclosed what he's asked for, until this year. Biden's office said he's requesting about $300 million.

The Obama campaign points out that although McCain hasn't asked for earmarks, his running mate hardly has room to talk. Watch McCain rail against earmarks »

"When you've been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that is not change," Obama said Monday.

According to state records and Taxpayers for Common Sense, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has asked for about $450 million in federal money since she became governor. But she also gets some credit.

"As governor, she has, by all records, started to reduce the number of earmark requests ... so it's a downward trajectory by our analysis but still significant earmark requests," Ellis said.


Palin also got into the earmarking game early, before she became governor. According to state records and Taxpayers for Common Sense, she helped get about $27 million, some of which went to the small Alaskan town of Wasilla, during her second term as mayor there, from 1998 to 2002.

The watchdog group said one of the reasons was that she hired a lobbying firm run by a former staffer for Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, one of Washington's most legendary earmarkers.

Fact Check: McCain earmark claims examined - CNN.com

 

[Silence]

I'm not really sure what your point is, as usual.

Obama isn't campaigning against earmarks. He's a liberal...of course he's going to ask for money to help fund projects that help the residents of his state...isn't that why they elected him, to look out for their interests?

Here is the part i really like

Obama has not made any requests for the next fiscal year, and even when he was asking for earmarks, he was far from the worst offender,

it's kind of cute how McCain blasts Obama for earmarks while he has on his ticket with him the woman who requested and received 27 million in earmarks for a town of 6,000 people and who, since becoming gov of Alaska has requested somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million in earmarks...she's only been gov for 22 months....

how does McCain reconcile his slams against Obama while standing next to the woman who is responsible for Alaska receiving more pork per capita than any other state in our nation?

 

[sealybobo]

I'm not really sure what your point is, as usual.

Obama isn't campaigning against earmarks. He's a liberal...of course he's going to ask for money to help fund projects that help the residents of his state...isn't that why they elected him, to look out for their interests?

Here is the part i really like



it's kind of cute how McCain blasts Obama for earmarks while he has on his ticket with him the woman who requested and received 27 million in earmarks for a town of 6,000 people and who, since becoming gov of Alaska has requested somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million in earmarks...she's only been gov for 22 months....

how does McCain reconcile his slams against Obama while standing next to the woman who is responsible for Alaska receiving more pork per capita than any other state in our nation?

Does someone else from Arizona secure all the earmarks for McCain? Or does Arizona get absolutely nothing from the Federal Government?

 

[dilloduck]

Does someone else from Arizona secure all the earmarks for McCain? Or does Arizona get absolutely nothing from the Federal Government?

Just make some shit up bobo---it's never stopped you before.

 

[Modbert]

I'm not really sure what your point is, as usual.

Obama isn't campaigning against earmarks. He's a liberal...of course he's going to ask for money to help fund projects that help the residents of his state...isn't that why they elected him, to look out for their interests?

Here is the part i really like



it's kind of cute how McCain blasts Obama for earmarks while he has on his ticket with him the woman who requested and received 27 million in earmarks for a town of 6,000 people and who, since becoming gov of Alaska has requested somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million in earmarks...she's only been gov for 22 months....

how does McCain reconcile his slams against Obama while standing next to the woman who is responsible for Alaska receiving more pork per capita than any other state in our nation?

Easy, ignore the truth and facts of the matter as he has been for awhile now.

 

[Silence]

Just make some shit up bobo---it's never stopped you before.

I think he was asking a question dillo, not making shit up. it's a legit question too...does the state of Arizone receive no discretionary funding?

mccain apparently hasn't always been opposed to earmarks either

An Old Earmark of McCain's Surfaces | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

 

[rayboyusmc]

No he has some earmark trails in his past also. He just either forgets from his age or lies. Sort of like he keeps stating that Sarah sold the plane on Ebay even when he knows she didn't.

McCain’s claim is false. In 2006, the senator teamed up with fellow Arizona senator Jon Kyl (R) to funnel $10 million toward the University of Arizona for an academic center named after the late Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. Even Arizona lawmaker, Rep. Jeff Flake (R), said he was planning to “lean against the measure.” The National Taxpayers Union, another traditional McCain ally, questioned why the senator was making federal taxpayers foot the bill for the center.

In 2003, McCain also slipped $14.3 million into a defense appropriations bill to
create a buffer zone around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. As Roll Call reported in 2003, this project violated McCain’s own anti-pork rhetoric:

The only problem is the project to acquire more land near the base was not requested by President Bush or fully authorized by the Senate Armed Services Committee - two of McCain’s criteria for identifying so-called ‘pork.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), a notorious porker, was overjoyed that McCain had joined his side. “One man’s pork is another man’s alternate white meat,” said Stevens. “If he asked for it, we put it in.”

UPDATE: On Nov. 17, 2003, Roll Call posted a “correction” to its original article about the Luke Air Force Base request:

The Nov. 6 article “McCain Breaks Own Pork Rule” inaccurately stated that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) violated his own rules against so-called “pork barrel” spending. The Senate Parliamentarian’s office maintains that the provision was properly authorized in the Senate-passed version of the fiscal 2004 Defense authorization bill and did not need to be signed by the president to be considered “authorized,” as the article suggested. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), chairwoman of the Appropriations subcommittee on military construction, told Roll Call that McCain never specifically asked her to put the $14.3 million project for Arizona’s Luke Air Force Base into the fiscal 2004 military construction bill.

Transcript:

WALLACE: But, Senator McCain, when you look at the fact that we survived 9/11, that we survived Hurricane Katrina, terrible blows to the economy and the economy kept growing, a lot of people say that’s because of the Bush tax cuts that you voted against.

MCCAIN: Well, I — and when we see what happened to spending and we have a bridge to nowhere of $233 million to an island with 50 people on it and we have former members of Congress who are now residing in federal prison because of the spending and corruption, my friend, we have to, if we’re going to restore the confidence of the American people and our Republican base first, we’re going to have to cut the spending, we’re going to have to eliminate the pork barrel and wasteful spending.

And I’m proud to tell you, Chris, in 24 years as a member of Congress, I have never asked for nor received a single earmark or pork barrel project for my state and I guarantee you I’ll veto those bills. I’ll ask for the line item veto and I’ll veto them and I’ll make the authors of them famous.

And we’ll get spending under control and then we’ll be able to have some physical sanity and restore trust and confidence on the part of the American people.

Think Progress McCain Falsely Claims He Has ‘Never Asked For A Single Earmark Or Pork Barrel Project’ For His State

 

[Navy1960]

Barack Obama your correct, is a liberal, and is not running and campaign based on earmarks. However, he is running one based on "Transparency" , which he likes to add that when it becomes transparent, there will be no more wasteful spending. so say's the man who champions earmarks for the state of Illinios. Only one problem with that, it's not Barack Obama's original idea and the Coburn/Obama "Transparency Bill" was voted on in the house in 2006 and passed, which does the very same thing your talking about. Oh and btw, Tom Coburn is a Republican, from Ok. who by the also voted to kill that "Ketchican Bridge" that Obama voted for twice. So Obama has taken a bill in the senate and has used it for one of his central campaign themes. Someone should tell him it already passed the Senate and was signed by president Bush.

Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No Obama is not saying he is for Earmarks but he is trying to champion a cause that has already passed and was signed into law, to look like he is the champion of govt. spending. So much for the "doing things different" in washington. Want proof? Well in 2007 here is a video talking about the very same thing, after the bill had already been signed into law as if it hadn't.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_c0OtZ7PUw]YouTube - 10 Questions: Transparency[/ame]

 

[manifold]

Fact Check: McCain earmark claims examined

Screw the marks on his ears. Somebody needs to examine that f*ck'n thing growing out the side of his face!