GOP Makes a U-Turn on Earmarks

Two stories on transportation infrastructure spending caught my eye this morning: one in which Rep. Reid Ribble (WI-08) praised Gov. Scott Walker for investing $1.5 billion in an interstate highway; and another in which two freshmen Pennsylvania Reps urged the Department of Transportation not to turn a different interstate into a toll road.

These freshmen are trapped between their desire to provide needed public services for their districts - which voters like - and the need to pay for these services - which voters hate. The fact is that highways need to be fixed and maintained, but while everyone wants to get credit for doing so, no one wants to get criticized for funding it.

So how does that square with the Republican dissatisfaction with the deficit?

This conversation occurs within the context of ongoing consideration for Congress' next highways bill.

Of course, this Congress has banned earmarks. So how do you fund highways and roads without earmarks? Well, Congressional sources tell FrumForum that Congress is just going to redefine earmarks as appropriations outside the realm of transportation. Even Michele Bachmann says so: “Advocating for transportation projects for ones district in my mind does not equate to an earmark," she told the Minnesota Star Tribune in November.

President Obama has also pledged not to sign any bills with earmarks in them. But if Republicans, the Knights Templar of earmark prohibition, say transportation spending projects don't constitute earmarks, who is he to disagree?

So there: problem solved! Principles kept! No compromise!

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