Palin Trumps Obama in Earmarks

by Alyssa Keninger and Kristin Simpson

The McCain-Palin campaign has made attacks on Obama’s earmark spending. But after a look at the numbers, the claims don’t match up.

It all started when Obama accused Sarah Palin of lobbying for the Bridge to Nowhere and then later hiding her original stance on the project when it became unpopular, according to the Wall Street Journal. “You can’t just make stuff up. You can’t just recreate yourself. The American people aren’t stupid,” Obama said.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded with, “The only people ‘lying’ about spending are the Obama campaign. The only explanation for their hysterical attacks is that they’re afraid that when John McCain and Sarah Palin are in the White House, Barack Obama’s nearly $1 billion in earmark spending will stop dead in its tracks.” At a rally on September 9, John McCain also claimed that Obama had requested nearly a billion dollars in earmarks.

The non-partisan, non-profit organization Citizens Against Government Waste has devoted themselves to eliminating waste, mismanagement and inefficiency in the federal government. They have defined a pork project as a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures.

So where does Obama fall in the pork game? Obama’s 54 projects for fiscal year 2008 total $97.4 million. When ranked from most pork to least, Obama comes in at number 70. McCain sits in a five-way tie for last place, with a total of $0. USA Today says Palin is sitting on $155 million for 2008. If Palin was a senator, she would come in 44th, sitting well above Obama.

But in terms of residents, Palin takes the prize in the pork-spending contest. According to the Associated Press, Palin has requested $750 million in her two years as governor—the largest per-capita request in the nation. When you break the numbers down per resident, Palin’s 2008 earmarks come out to about $231 per capita, compared with earmarks of roughly $22 per person in Illinois.

CNN claims that indeed Obama has requested $1 billion in pork in his nearly four years as senator. That’s an average of $250 million a year. Apply the same means to Palin’s record and she ends up with $375 million per year.

McCain, the fearless leader of anti-earmark spending, has spent much of his career fighting the special spending system that allows politicians to gather cash for pet projects back home and has even published lists of these financial gifts. And Alaska’s most recent governor has not gone unnoticed by her presidential running mate. In recent years, McCain’s inventory of “objectionable spending” has included the small Alaskan town of Wasilla three times. All three of those porky projects were requested by the mayor at the time, who just so happens to be Palin.

To add to all of the pork-talk, in September McCain claimed that Palin didn't take any earmarks as governor—false! She took $198 million in February alone. When talking about Palin, a McCain spokesperson quotes McCain as saying she has a “record of reforming government, which includes cuts in wasteful spending in the Alaska state budget.” The spokesperson also said that McCain didn’t mean to give people the wrong impression: “it certainly wasn’t intentional or without some basis in fact.”

What does Palin say? That depends on when you ask her. In an interview, Palin first said she approves of the elimination of earmarks. Later on, in the same interview, she said she just wants to reform the process, saying she wanted it “to be in the light of day, not behind closed doors, with lobbyists making deals with Congress to stick things in there under the public radar.” But as recently as this year, Palin has shown support for earmarks in a column in the Fairbanks News-Miner, calling her earmark request “a responsible approach.”

Lesson: You can’t heed every claim you hear. McCain’s campaign attacked Obama’s earmark spending. But the same campaign also attacked Palin’s earmark spending, and then falsely denied that she had any pork projects as governor. And then there’s Palin, who changes her mind on her stance on earmarks. Through the melee of all of the accusations, one thing stands clear. Obama has less earmark spending than Palin, both per constituent and per year. When the claims don’t add up, look at the figures. Numbers don’t lie.