Question of Timing on Bush’s Push on Earmarks

[ursi]

WASHINGTON — President Bush has never shown much distaste for Congressional pork.

But in his last year in office, with his party out of power on Capitol Hill, he declared Monday that he had had enough.

In the last seven years he has signed spending bills containing about 55,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion for projects like a new lane for a local road, a new facade for a town landmark or a weapons contract for a company that happened to be a big donor to an influential lawmaker.

Such projects tucked into the endnotes of complex spending bills at the request of individual lawmakers with almost no oversight have contributed to a mounting pileup of waste and corruption, including sending the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the former congressman Randy Cunningham, a California Republican, to jail.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/washington/29earmark.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Lasher]

1. This is strictly partisan.

Junior never said anything about earmarks while Republicans controlled Congress. This rhetoric began the minute Democrats won in 2006.