Reporter 1: Senator Thune, I was just looking at the list of earmark requests that you requested this year [in the Omnibus spending bill] and it adds up to over a hundred million dollars
Thune: I support those projects, but I don’t support this bill [to which my own earmarks are attached; I do not support it because of earmarks.]
Reporter 2: Going through this bill, there is earmark after earmark from the both of you, millions of dollars in earmarks, why do you have any credibility on this?
Cornyn: Because we’re going to vote against the bill.
Reporter 3: It appears like you’re saying one thing and doing another.
Cornyn: Not at all,
Thune: [also stepped in to defend their stance on the Omnibus]
GOP aide: We’ve got to leave it there – we’ve got to get going.
Tag: earmarks
Mitch McConnell, Earmark Opposer
Mitch McConnell plans to filibuster an omnibus spending bill because of the earmarks larded onto it. Worth noting that he personally added several of these earmarks to the bill. Your 2010 GOP, staunch earmark opponents as recently as a week ago:
the legislation includes provisions requested this year by McConnell, including $650,000 for a genetic technology center at the University of Kentucky, according to an analysis of the bill by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog.
[…]
But McConnell, like other new earmark opponents, stopped short of asking for his projects to be removed from the bill.
Rest assured, we shall never speak of this again. Or now, really. Just forget any of this happened.
Lemkin 