PALIN EARMARKS VS. FEDERAL FUNDING

Ed made this observation:

"It is my understanding that asking for earmarks is different than legislation or fed funding. This is what happened with the "Bridge to Nowhere". It went from earmark to fed funding and there was a vote. The media makes it seem like it was dead when she cancelled it. It wasn't dead it just changed from being an earmark. Another thing, not said enough, is that both Obama and Biden voted for it as opposed to sending that money to New Orleans for Katrina victims. The vote was in the wake of Katrina.

Also, no doubt there were earmarks under Palin. Alaska is, I think, the state that historically has always received a huge number of earmarks. A more relevant question than whether or not there were earmarks under her administration is whether or not the number of earmarks increased or decreased. I don't know the answer to this but for some reason I believe they decreased.

Also, I believe but may be wrong that McCain is the only politician who practices abstinence with respect to earmarks whereas I believe Obama has averaged about one million a day during his Senate tenure."

UPDATE:

Governors Cannot Earmark by Shannon Love

This Wall Street Journal article [h/t Instapundit] makes it seem like Sarah Palin is a hypocrite for criticizing earmarks even though she has requested earmark after earmark for Alaska.

Only one problem exists for this scenario: Governors cannot earmark. Indeed, governors may not make any formal input to federal legislation in the least.

The Wall Street Journal needs to reread the Constitution.

The problem with earmarks lies less in their often seemingly trivial and non-federal import than in the unaccountable mechanism by which individual federal legislators turn them into law. Earmarks lead to corruption by allowing individual legislators to reward constituents and contributors without having to stand up and argue publicly for spending the funds. In short, earmarks represent a defect in the parliamentary procedure of the federal Congress. The term “earmark” isn’t simply shorthand for “federal spending I do not like.”

As such, earmarks represent a flaw in the federal Congress, not the state governments. No one in state government can “request” an earmark. An official of a state government can only (1) apply for federal funds made available through existing federal legislation or (2) make an informal request to the state’s federal representatives that they argue for particular funding. In neither case is the governor responsible for how the federal government makes the funding available.

Trying to tie Palin to earmarks requires constructing a straw-man representation of her and McCain’s arguments in which they argue that the government should never spend federal money on specific state projects. Since they haven’t done so but, rather, merely argued for reforming the parliamentary procedure of the federal Congress, to make it more accountable, this article provides no new insight into Palin.

Of course, we all know how this is going to play out in the media, don’t we? We all know this will show up in the campaign arguments of that professor of constitutional law, Barack Obama.

Comments

[rewinn]

So if Palin can't ask for earmarks, she can't take credit for not asking for them either.

Either way, McCain lied about it, and he's the one at the top of the ticket.