Clinton Dynasty & Federal Pork (2.2 Billion)

Hillary Clinton Reigns as Queen of Federal Pork

By Kevin Hassett

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) — Democrats came into power this year promising meaningful earmark reform to a U.S. electorate that was rightly disgusted with Congress’s free-spending habits. Today, earmarks continue to be out of control, and the predictable result is that the Democratic Congress is now even less popular in national polls than the Republican one before it.

There is an underappreciated angle to the story of how lawmakers steer federal funds toward their pet projects that may yet swing the next presidential election. Democrats have been so busy preparing the coronation of Hillary Clinton that they have failed to train a critical eye on her record.

When it comes to earmarks, an issue that voters responded to more than any other in the last election except for Iraq, her record is about as bad as it gets. If Dennis Hastert was the king of earmarks, Hillary Clinton was his queen. Republicans had their “bridge to nowhere.” Hillary has her knitting mill.

The statistics speak for themselves. Ever since she arrived in Washington, Hillary has worked tirelessly to bring the pork home to her adopted state, New York. It used to be that such efforts were cloaked in secrecy. No longer.

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On the Democratic side, however, the major candidates have been much less forthright.

Only Barack Obama has voluntarily made his earmark information publicly available. The others are covering their tracks. Senator Joe Biden’s spokeswoman explained, “We don’t release them until the committee has had the opportunity to review the requests.” A spokeswoman for the Dennis Kucinich campaign argued, “We never have made our earmarks public.”

The Clinton campaign refused to respond at all to requests that she identify her earmarks.

Top Earmarker

A little digging shows why they are so evasive. In fiscal year 2006, Chris Dodd and fellow Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman were jointly responsible for more than $100 million worth of earmarks for their home state, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Yet Clinton, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, placed $2.2 billion worth of earmarks in spending bills from 2002-2006. One would have to concede that she is good at it. In the fiscal 2008 defense-spending bill alone, Clinton successfully attached 26 earmarks worth $148 million, which was the most of any Democrat except Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who is now chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

The earmark game is a treacherous one because it is so easy to find specific instances, like the bridge to nowhere in Alaska, that are repulsive to voters. With such a successful track record, this will be a genuine liability for Clinton.

Bury the Record

That probably explains why she’s trying to bury her record. But even digging through the limited list of earmarks I could acquire suggested that Clinton has deftly spread federal taxpayers’ money around to parochial projects of questionable public value, sending, for example, $250,000 to the Seneca Knitting Mill, and $200,000 to the Buffalo Urban Arts Center.

Such spending projects might be great local politics, but they produce national outrage as our federal dollars are bled away from health care and national security. Each one may seem small, but collectively they are not.  

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