On Tuesday, Issa explained on CSPAN that the purpose of his investigation would be to take a broader look into the very idea of clean energy loan programs. Although Solyndra’s investors include an influential Republican donor, Issa and other Republicans on his committee have singled out one Obama fundraiser who also invested in the company as evidence of crony capitalism. He called the Republican-created clean energy loan system, the one that benefitted Solyndra, an example of the government picking “winners and losers” and an “easy way to end up with corruption in government”:

ISSA: In the case of the president’s people, in the case of Henry Waxman, clearly he had people who saw a link between their campaign contributions, their ideological bent, and these companies.

Watch it:

As Bloomberg’s Jim Snyder reported yesterday, Issa sent letters to the Department of Energy requesting money for companies using a clean energy loan program similar to the one denounced this week as inherently corrupt. On Jan. 14, 2010, Issa sent a letter to Secretary Chu requesting an expedited loan to Aptera Motors, a start-up electric car company. Issa said the company would create jobs and “aid U.S long-term energy goals by shifting away from fossil fuels and using viable renewable energy sources like plug-in electric energy.” He also sent a letter along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to the Obama administration requesting a government loan to a green tech battery company.

Issa’s spokesman says that Aptera deserved the taxpayer-subsidized loan, and that certainly may be the case. However, Issa said his investigation will probe campaign contributions and their relation to the decision to award such loans.

It turns out that a financial backer of Aptera, the company Issa assisted with a loan request, is a major Republican donor and a contributor to Issa.

According to GreenVC, one of the investors backing Aptera is the Beall Family Trust. The Beall Family Trust is controlled by Don Beall, the former CEO of Rockwell. Beall, now a board member of Aptera, happens to be a Republican donor in California. A political action committee he helped found and fund, the New Majority PAC, has contributed at least $15,000 to Issa over the years.

Beall has given to the McCain campaign, the Bush campaigns, and various party and congressional campaign accounts. As Lucas O’Connor notes, Beall’s profile as a major donor makes him a “good friend to have for any California Republican looking to improve their profile, their influence, or their office.” Beall gave one direct donation to Issa, a $250 check. The donation came just two months before Issa sent a letter recommending the government loan to Beall’s company, Aptera.

Aptera isn’t the only company with campaign ties to Issa that the congressman attempted to help. In 2006, executives from the defense contractor Vertigo Inc. contributed at least $6,500 to Issa’s campaign. The next year, Issa made an earmark request specifically for the company. In 2008, the defense appropriations bill awarded the company with a $1,440,000 earmark. Issa was the only member of Congress to add his name to the request.

Crony capitalism should be investigated by Congress, from the revolving door to the undue influence of selfish special interests. For Issa to avoid the appearance of a partisan witch-hunt, the Oversight Committee investigation should consider Issa’s own involvement in clean energy loans.

While serving as a U.S. senator in 2003, Santorum procured over $3.1 million in federal earmarks for social conservative causes — over $1 million of which has gone to the anti-gay Urban Family Council. The Christian group and its president William Devlin have actively opposed gay rights, from promoting a same-sex marriage ban to supporting laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Devlin even criticized the enactment of a stronger hate-speech ban in Philadelphia in 2005:

“There is a collective spirit of fear hanging over this city. Right now, the gays own Philadelphia…Over the last ten years, I’ve been to pastor after pastor in this city, trying to get them to put pressure on the elected officials who’ve been pushing the homosexual agenda. They’re all afraid to speak up. They’re like the frog in the kettle: they’ve sat there in silence for all this time while the gays kept turning up the water temperature. Now it’s come to a boil, and they’re still in the pot.”

In turn, the UFC and its president William Devlin campaigned for Santorum during his 2006 campaign, potentially violating the IRS rules regarding acceptable political activity for religious organizations. Along with the three other Christian groups in the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, the UFC hosted a get-out-the-vote drive in local churches at which Santorum was the only candidate represented; he gave a seven-minute speech to pastors on the importance of the same-sex marriage initiative via a pre-recorded video.

Santorum’s close relationship with social conservative groups like UFC, including the securing of federal dollars for their causes, has led right-wing writers to characterize Santorum as more inclined “to make government pro-family, not to make it small.” As RedState’s Ben Domenech concludes, “It’s precisely the Republican Party of Rick Santorum that even makes the Tea Party movement necessary.”

–Sarah Bufkin

Bachmann, who once declared, “All this pork is bad” and has centered her campaign around denouncing out-of-control government spending, was less than truthful when disclosing the full extent of the earmarks she’s taken during an interview on Sunday with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

Wallace confronted her with the government funds she’s accepted over the years while portraying herself as a fiscal conservative. They include $30,000 for a counseling clinic run by her husband and $260,000 in federal subsidies for a family farm in Wisconsin, where she is listed as a partner. Bachmann, a Tea Party favorite, struggled to square her pledge not to take congressional pork with accepting earmarks for personal projects.

WALLACE: Over the years you sought more than $60 million in state earmarks and more than $3.7 million in federal earmarks. Question: that’s a fiscal hawk?

BACHMANN: Well let’s go through them. First of all the money that went to the clinic was actually training money for employees. The clinic did not get the money and my husband and I did not get the money…Number two regarding the farm, the farm is my father-in-law’s farm, it’s not my husband and my farm. My husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm. Regarding the earmarks, I believe the right place to build projects is in the state. And the states have to build roads and bridges, and I don’t apologize for building roads and bridges.

WALLACE: So you’re pro-earmark?

BACHMANN: No, during my first term in Congress I signed a pledge that I will not take earmarks. I’ve been faithful to that pledge.

Watch it:

Bachmann’s claim that she has been faithful to the no-earmark pledge simply does not square with the facts. And as Wallace pointed out, Bachmann’s counseling clinic benefited from federal money even if it was “just” for employee training, as she claimed. Her defense that “it actually took away from the clinic because these were training hours where employees were not able to bring more income” doesn’t pass the laugh test, as Bachmann or her partner would have had to apply for and accept federal funds to receive money for employee training. She also failed to explain how “additional training to help employees” was not a benefit to the clinic (or why she applied for it if that was the case).

She also dismissed the charge that she was “pro-earmark” based on the fact that some of the pork she took was for infrastructure projects. Her defense that pork isn’t pork if it’s for projects she likes sounds a lot like the political truism: “It’s only pork if your opponent takes it.”

All in all, Bachmann’s explanation was completely inadequate, fudged the truth, and failed to justify how she took taxpayer money for pet projects while denouncing reckless Washington spending. As she kicks off a three-state campaign tour, hopefully the media will continue to press her until she gives a more honest accounting of the earmarks she accepted.

Issa did not dispute the fact that his earmark could benefit his real estate property. Instead, he argued that the earmark was simply a request from a constituent. In his Tweet, Issa linked to a letter from a county government group requesting the earmarks at issue. It would be appropriate if the earmark had been requested coincidentally near property Issa already owned. Over the years, starting with fiscal year 2007, Issa had placed the West Vista Way earmark on his list of interested earmarks. However, the timeline of events shows that Issa actually purchased his $16.6 million office building with the knowledge that his own earmark next to it was finally pending:

– February 20, 2008: According to the letter provided by Issa’s office, the San Diego Association of Governments requested $2 million in taxpayer earmarks for widening and improving the West Vista Way road in Vista, California.

– March 4, 2008: Issa releases the list of over $200 million in earmark requests that includes the $2 million request for the improvements on West Vista Way.

– October 8, 2008: Issa negotiates the purchase of the Vista Medical Plaza for $16.6 million. The building is situated next to West Vista Way and along the area where the earmarked improvements are targeted.

– February 2009: A few months after closing the deal on his multi-million dollar Vista Medical Plaza office building, Issa pushes for his West Vista Way earmark in the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009. Unlike any of Issa’s other earmarks, Issa secured two separate earmarks for West Vista Way into the bill: one for $245,000 and another for $570,000.

– February 2009: Although Issa publicly listed over $200 million in earmarks for the FY2009 budget, he only secured a few. He did not obtain a million dollar Boys and Girl grant, nor did he secure one for a flood control grant in his district. Out of all of the earmarks he publicly listed, the West Vista Way one seemed to fair better than most.

– March 11, 2009: President Obama signs the Omnibus into law, granting a total of $815,000 to the West Vista Way project for Issa. Issa later begins advertising his Vista Medical Plaza and its “Excellent Access with Freeway Visibility.”

As we noted yesterday, Issa has said that an “earmark is tantamount to a bribe.” Issa’s fellow House Republicans in the San Diego area have a long history of earmark related scandals. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) got caught enriching himself off of land deals boosted by the earmarking process. Former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) was embroiled in a similar controversy. Responding to the Cunningham scandal, Issa made a poignant observation:

“The Duke Cunningham earmark-bribery scandal brought new scrutiny to members of Congress and, specifically, to the appropriations process. Constituents want to know that the project requests we make benefit our communities, our country, and don’t line our pockets.”

Planning his role as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Issa called for hearings on the earmarking process. Given Issa’s remarks on the Cunningham scandal, he should be acutely aware of the ethical problems posed by buying property next to his own earmark projects.

Why did Issa purchase the land when he had a pending earmark request that could increase its value? Will he now withdraw his earmark since he might benefit financially from the project?

ThinkProgress has discovered more troubling evidence that Issa may have blended his work as a lawmaker with his own business empire. After founding a successful car alarm company, Issa invested his fortune in a sprawling network of real estate companies with holdings throughout his district. One of Issa’s most valuable properties, a medical office building at 2067 West Vista Way in Vista, California, is called the Vista Medical Center, and was purchased in 2008 for $16.6 million. Described as “a long-term investment,” the property was bought by a company called Viper LLC, a business entity operated by Issa’s family that Issa has up to a $25 million dollar stake in.

Around the same time Issa made the Vista Medical Center purchase, the congressman began requesting millions of dollars worth of earmarks to widen and improve the highway adjacent to the building. In 2008, he requested $2 million to expand West Vista Way, the road in front of his “long-term investment,” but only received $245,000 from the government. The next year, Issa made another earmark request for improving the West Vista Way highway next to his building. He earmarked another $570,000, bringing his total to $815,000, to add parking lots, widen the road, add bus stops, improve the sewer system, and other utility work. A map showing the location of Issa’s property, and the road, is below:

Issa has said that an “earmark is tantamount to a bribe.” While Issa has handed out earmarks to his campaign donors in the past, in this case, he appears to be helping himself.

Although the highway project has not begun yet (because of local budget problems), the federal money is allocated through Issa’s efforts. Already, a firm representing Issa’s real estate company is advertising the Vista Medical Building and its “Excellent Access with Freeway Visibility.” As ethics experts have explained, lawmakers should avoid earmarks in the immediate area of their own business interests.

Issa’s highway earmarks not only potentially benefit his multi-million dollar medical office building, they provide better access to his other properties in the area. About 2 miles down West Vista Way from the Vista Medical Center, Issa owns a commercial office building worth over $9 million, as well as an adjacent retail office building. The commercial office building leases to a number of different clients, and Issa’s retail building leases to a Hooter’s. All three properties are on the same highway, which Issa plans to retrofit with taxpayer money.

Graham said there are plans to put language in the continuing budget resolution for the current year authorizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to spend some of its own money so the study is not delayed further.

It will not mention Charleston specifically or include a dollar amount but Graham says corps officials told him they could put in between $50,000 and $100,000.

“The state is ready to write the check for the rest tomorrow. We just need to get the corps authorization to spend the money,” he said, adding he will oppose any continuing budget without the provision.

“Is that an earmark?” Graham rhetorically asked reporters. “I don’t know what you call it. To me it makes sense.” Graham’s more conservative South Carolina colleague, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), supports the project, but not Graham’s funding method. He’s proposing an independent commission that would assess the merits of Army Corps projects, instead of allowing lawmakers to direct projects through earmarks.

While the port deepening may be a worthy project, Graham’s promise to fund it by any means necessary conflicts with the GOP’s stance on earmarks — and his own comments. A few months ago, Graham called earmarks “abuses” of power that lead “many to question our willingness to get our nation’s fiscal house in order.” And just last month, Graham said, “Taking a time out on earmarking, I think, would be good to just show the American people that we’re not totally living on different planet from you.” Watch it:

Yesterday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Thune (R-SD) denounced earmarks and the omnibus bill during a press conference, despite requesting hundreds of millions of dollars of earmarks between them. “I support those projects, but I don’t support this bill,” reasoned Thune. Cornyn defended himself in a “heated exchange” with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl:

Today, the Washington Post reports that two of the most prolific earmarkers in Congress — “unabashed spending barons” Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran of Mississippi — are also planning to vote against the omnibus, despite being responsible for 405 earmarks costing over $865 million.

Sens. McConnell, Wicker, Cochran, Cornyn and Thune are far from the only earmark hypocrites, however. A large number of Republicans requested substantial earmarks for the 2011 omnibus, despite a history of demagoguing the earmark process, and also plan to vote against a bill that included many of their requests. An examination of Taxpayers for Common Sense’s database of earmark requests for this year’s omnibus and their database of who was awarded earmarks last year, along with Sen. Tom Coburn’s working database of the earmarks that actually made it into this year’s omnibus, reveal quite a bit of Republican hypocrisy:

– Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said on Fox News’ “Happening Now” this morning that he would vote against the omnibus bill. He requested 291 earmarks totaling over $770.5 million, and succeeded in getting 86 earmarks into the omnibus.

– Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is opposing the omnibus because it’s “full of unnecessary spending which grows the federal government.” He requested 116 earmarks costing $326.8 million, and the omnibus contains one of these for $379,000.

– Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-TX) office said she will vote against the omnibus, which she tried to insert 119 earmarks into, at a cost of $770.9 million. She has $140 million earmarked in the bill.

– Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) will also oppose the omnibus, because it “simply spends too much.” Chambliss requested 122 earmarks totaling $492 million. He achieved $56 million in earmarks in the omnibus.

– Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) blasted the “massive, 2,000 page spending bill” in a statement. Burr tried for 82 earmarks, totaling $287.1 million, and received most of them.

– Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) “has been railing against the spending in that massive bill that could come to a vote before the lame duck session.” He requested 32 earmarks this year, totaling $115.8 million, and got nearly all of them — almost $100 million — into the omnibus.

– Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) tweeted today that “Defending the #earmark establishment is not leadership. Defending business-as-usual in Washington isn’t either. Leaders lead by example.” Rehberg is a proud member of the “earmark establishment” — last year he was the fifth-largest earmarker in the House, with 89 earmarks in the 2010 omnibus totaling $103.5 million.

– Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) said on Fox Business Channel this morning that “It’s a week before Christmas, and unfortunately my Democratic colleagues like to play Santa Claus to the tune of $8 billion in new earmarks.” Lee was in a much more festive mood last year, with 36 earmarks totaling over $33.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

– Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) tweeted today that “A HUGE spending bill is making its way through Congress. $1.1 trillion and 6,000 earmarks. We must stop it. I encourage the President to veto.” Last year, however, Wilson got 15 earmarks costing over $23.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

It is the height of hypocrisy for these Republicans — all of whom have a long history of earmarking, and in most cases requested and received earmarks in this very bill — to suddenly oppose it because of a newly found opposition to “wasteful” spending.

Yesterday, the Senate unveiled an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the government. Senate Republicans immediately attacked the bill en masse for containing billions in earmarks, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) calling the spending provisions “completely and totally inappropriate” and saying he is “actively working to defeat” the bill. “This nearly 2,000-page omnibus filled with thousands of earmarks,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said, shows that “President Obama and Democrats have apparently learned nothing from this November’s election.”

Yet, the same may be said about congressional Republicans, who themselves requested over $2 billion in the earmarks attached the omnibus, including millions from McConnell himself:

Earlier this year, McConnell asked for $4 million for marijuana eradication efforts by the Kentucky National Guard; $1 million for construction of the Kentucky Blood Center Building; and $650,000 for Advanced Genetic Technologies, a DNA research center at the University of Kentucky.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “has a $379,000 earmark to study port dredging in Charleston, something he considers key to economic development.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) championed an earmark that would prevent the state of Texas from converting existing interstate highway lanes into toll roads. And Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) requested over $16 million in defense-related earmarks.

Appearing on Fox News this morning, Cornyn attacked the omnibus bill for containing earmarks, but host Bill Hemmer confronted Cornyn with his own $16 million request. At first, the senator fumbled and tried to change the subject, but after being pressed, Cornyn defended the merits of his earmarks but not the process, before finally trying to exculpate himself by saying he requested the money “earlier on in the year”:

HEMMER: You yourself has asked for earmarks too. … Can you defend that senator?

CORNYN: Well, I believe I can. But I’m not going to. Because I’m going to vote against this bill. … I think we need an earmark moratorium, which I voted for two years, till we fix this broken system, because it’s become a symbol of wasteful Washington spending.

HEMMER: I get it, but I’m confused then, then why is there $16 million in requests from you? Is that not true?

CORNYN: Earlier on in the year, I did request earmarks that I think are individually defensible. And if we had a debate on the floor, I think I could show how they help our men and women in uniform fight two different wars.

Watch it:

Of course, Cornyn is right to argue that many earmarks have merit and provide necessary funds for important projects in lawmakers’ districts. For this reason, Democrats and a handful of dissenting Republicans rebuffed efforts to impose a binding earmark ban in the Senate last month. Moreover, as retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) said, “We’re fooling the American people when we tell them the problem [with the deficit] is earmarks.”

But if Cornyn and his colleagues are going to pander to the tea party movement and demonize earmarks, they should at least practice what they preach. But so far, they have not. Just three days after the Senate GOP voted to enact their earmark ban, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the number two Senate Republican, “got himself a whopping $200 million” earmark for his state. Meanwhile, the group of House Republicans most closely aligned with the tea party, those in the Tea Party Caucus, have taken over $1 billion in earmarks over the past year.

However, there is one Republican Senator who does appear willing to reach across the aisle. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) is a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act and has been leading the push to take up the New START arms control agreement. This morning, on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley, Lugar explained the logic behind his positions, stating the GOP must “never be the party of no”:

LUGAR: Many would say, and have said, “why do anything President Obama wants — something that gives him a victory?” Therefore, we’re the party of no. I think some of us said, “No, we are not the party of no. We must never be the party of no.”

CROWLEY: Are you winning or losing that side?

LUGAR: Oh, I think that remains to be seen. [...] The American people — angry as they are with Democrats with the tsunami that came in the election — are finally going to say to the Republicans, “Okay, now what are you guys going to do? What is your program?”

“Our program is to stop Obama,” some would say. “Our program is to defeat Obama. It’s a two-staged process. You defeat the Democrats first of all in the Congress and then you defeat Obama. Then, then we’ll come out and we’ll tell you.”

Well that’s not going to work. At some point there really has to be constructive Republican programs.

Watch it:

Lugar is up for reelection next year and the Tea Party has already warned that his positions may cost him his seat. Former GOP Sen. John Danforth is more worried about what the backlash against Lugar says about his own party. “We have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption,” stated Danforth about the Republican Party’s attack on Lugar. Nonetheless, Lugar is sticking to his guns, daring the Tea Party to challenge him in the 2012 Senate primary.

During his interview, Lugar also credited Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) with standing up to an obstructive, “rebellious” faction of the Republican Party. However, McConnell himself has indicated that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

But it appears that tea party’s self-proclaimed representatives in Washington haven’t been putting their money where their mouths are. Hotline On Call reports today that members of House Tea Party Caucus, founded by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to “represent the views of our constituents,” requested over $1 billion in earmarks during the last fiscal year:

According to a Hotline review of records compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, the 52 members of the caucus, which pledges to cut spending and reduce the size of government, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010, the last year for which records are available.

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), for one, attached his name to 69 earmarks in the last fiscal year, for a total of $78,263,000. The 41 earmarks Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) requested were worth $65,395,000. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) wanted $63,400,000 for 39 special projects, and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) wanted $93,980,000 set aside for 47 projects.

When asked to explain how they could join a caucus dedicated to fighting government spending and yet request millions in pork projects, tea party lawmakers told the Hotline that they stopped requesting new earmarks after joining the group.

But this is hardly the first indication that Republicans may not be as genuine in their commitment to fighting pork as they would like tea party activists to believe. Last month, as the AP reported that “[o]nly three days after GOP senators and senators-elect renounced earmarks, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, got himself a whopping $200 million to settle an Arizona Indian tribe’s water rights claim against the government.” An earmark ban was also conspicuously absent from House Republicans’ Pledge to American governing agenda, causing uproar among activists.

Tea party favorite Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) highlights this disparity between rhetoric and action well. In March, his website told supporters that “a ban on wasteful earmark spending in Washington D.C. [is] one of the key points of his campaign.” But after winning the election, Paul told the Wall Street Journal that he “will fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork,” suggesting it would be “crazy” not to.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — whom National Journal ranked as the most conservative senator in 2009 — has gone even further, declaring “an all-out war within the Senate GOP conference next week to defeat an earmark moratorium.” Inhofe has said he will take to the Senate floor Monday to deliver a “pretty strong statement” against the ban, and to call out DeMint for supporting earmarks before he was against them. DeMint “was really pro-earmark. … He ran as a pro-earmarker” as a House Member in 2004, Inhofe told Roll Call.

In an interview with conservative radio host Ed Morrissey yesterday, Inhofe said people like DeMint who oppose earmarks are “brainwashed,” adding that if his fellow senators vote to ban earmarks they are voting to “trash the constitution and reject their oath of office”:

INHOFE: They’ve been demagoguing this whole thing on earmarks, but you’ll never convince the American people of it because they are so thoroughly brainwashed. You say earmark, they say, oh, earmarks are bad. But then when they stop and define the earmarks, then they think, that is what the Constitution — that is what James Madison said we are supposed to be doing in the House and the Senate.

So my concern is this…these guys will come in and the first vote they will cast is to trash the Constitution and reject their oath of office. I know that sounds extreme, but I don’t want these guys sitting around worrying about whether or not we will not do our job and whether we will cede our power to the president, or not.

Listen here :

Meanwhile, tea party leaders are furious that conservative favorites like Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) have suggested they will request earmarks. Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, told the Washington Independent’s Jesse Zwick today that the tea party will hold members accountable if they don’t support an earmark ban. “This is a fundamental issue — it’s both substantive and symbolic. … This is a vote that will never go away, like TARP,” she said. In fact, she issued a threat to those who oppose an earmark ban, saying, “in 2012 when they have aggressive, well-funded primary challengers, they’ll know why.” Indeed, her group sent an action alert to members today saying, “Our first battle with the newly empowered GOP” will be over earmarks.

One Tea Party hero, Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY), jumped on the anti-earmark bandwagon early, making “a ban on wasteful earmark spending in Washington D.C. one of the key points of his campaign” in March. Lambasting lawmakers who opt for “photo-ops with oversized fake cardboard checks,” Paul vowed to “dismantle the culture of professional politicians” even if he “ruffled a lot of establishment feathers” while doing it.

But after joining the GOP flock on Election Day, Paul is singing a different tune. In a Wall Street Journal profile this weekend, Paul signaled an about-face on his earmark position, committing to “fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork.” After all, he’s “not that crazy” of a libertarian:

Father and son, age 47, have different styles. Asked what he wanted to do in Washington in a Wednesday morning television interview, the senator-elect said that his kids were hoping to meet the Obama girls. He has made other concessions to the mainstream. He now avoids his dad’s talk of shuttering the Federal Reserve and abolishing the income tax. In a bigger shift from his campaign pledge to end earmarks, he tells me that they are a bad “symbol” of easy spending but that he will fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork, as long as it’s doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night. “I will advocate for Kentucky’s interests,” he says.

So you’re not a crazy libertarian? “Not that crazy,” he cracks.

In entertaining the idea of earmarks, Paul is bucking one of his prominent supporters, Tea Party hero Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). DeMint has repeatedly made it clear that “he wants to ban all lawmakers’ requests for specific spending.” “We can’t have 500 congressmen and senators who think it’s their job to bring home the bacon and that’s what’s going to change,” he told CBS’s The Early Show last week. Even House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) — who indicated in August that earmarks “could make their way back” if based on “merit, not muscle” — is now calling to “continue the moratorium on earmarks” in his newly-released plan “in order to decrease government spending and rein in the deficit.”

Ironically, while Paul touts his anti-establishment, Tea Party credentials, he is actually joining some in the House and Senate GOP establishment in disregarding the Tea Party’s wishes on earmarks. Presumptive House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refused to pursue a complete ban on earmarks in an interview with Fox News last Thursday “because some things that people call earmarks here wouldn’t classify as an earmark to the American people.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was much clearer in his view yesterday, saying that ending earmarks won’t cut spending and that it’s not realistic.

If he’s already selling out his Tea Party pledges, as the conservative National Review suggests, Paul may be proving earmark-happy Rep. Roy Blunt’s (R-MO) sentiments correct: “they can be as ideological as they want before getting to Washington but will soon discover that things are quite different once inside of the beast.”

Update

Rand Paul’s new-found support for earmarks marks a stark flip from his anti-earmark position he held as recently as yesterday. On ABC’s This Week, host Christiane Amanpour pushed Paul on the ways he’d cut spending. When she asked about earmarks, Paul declared “no more earmarks”:

AMANPOUR: And what about earmarks? Would you say no to earmarks?

PAUL: No — no more earmarks.

AMANPOUR: No more? Not even in your state?

PAUL: No. No. But I do tell people within Kentucky is I say, look, I will argue within the committee process for things that are good for Kentucky that they want and also within the context of a balanced budget.

Watch it (starting at 10:15):

There are also members of the caucus that oppose such a ban, like Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky. He defended earmarks in September, telling Politico that “there is obviously a need for a member to be able to come on out to the Congress for a particular need in his or her district that the regular order is not solving.” Rogers is no backbencher, however — he has long been discussed as being “in line” to take over the House Appropriations Committee, the place where earmarks originate. Now, he tells the Rural Blog that he has secured the votes necessary to assume the committee chairmanship.

Rogers defends earmarks because he’s very good at getting them. Rogers received over $431 million in earmarks just in fiscal years 2008-10, and has steered billions of dollars to his rural Kentucky district over the course of his career, making him one of the most prolific earmarkers in Congress. Many times, Rogers will create a non-profit in his district and then steer money to it, something that troubles government watchdogs:

“When we see a member of Congress using tax dollars to create such non-profit entities, we call it phony philanthropy,” said David Williams, vice president of policy for Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based group that tracks federal pork. “It’s easy to spend someone else’s money; it’s much harder to spend your own. If you set up a non-profit advocacy and they’re advocating a point of view, then every citizen is advocating that view whether they agree with it or not.”

One example among Rogers’ earmarks is Operation UNITE. Critics say that while the program, which was created by Rogers and is poised to receive roughly $13 million in earmarks to ramp up anti-drug initiatives, has been effective, UNITE focuses too heavily on law enforcement and arrests and doesn’t channel enough money into treatment and rehabilitation.

While Republican leaders and candidates on the campaign trail say they want to end earmark abuse — and even earmarks entirely — the task will be very difficult when a powerful Republican pork king assumes control of the committee that hands out earmarks.

(HT: Barefoot and Progressive)

Republicans countered by noting that they have already implemented a temporary moratorium on earmarks, and say they plan to extend it after it expires. “Republicans, we’re going to continue this earmark ban. We’ve already done the earmark ban. That’s why it’s not in the pledge,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Good Morning America late last month.

But Roll Call reports today that House GOP leaders may not be as committed to earmark transparency as they are letting on. A House GOP website set up early this year to provide a searchable database of federal earmark requests “has disappeared.” Sunshine.gop.gov now links only to a March press release which trumpets the House GOP’s supposed commitment to transparency:

Republican aides who were asked Wednesday afternoon about the website’s disappearance were puzzled about what had become of it, and none could explain why it went dark.

A spokeswoman for the Sunlight Foundation said the site had been “laying low” for a while, seemingly replaced by other GOP initiatives, and had not functioned off the Hill for “some time.” [...]

A spokesperson for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who spearheaded the project, was “not available for comment.” McMorris Rodgers touted the website as a major innovation when she announced it in January, saying, “As Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, one of my top priorities is to increase transparency and accountability in government. That’s why I launched a website which enables citizens to track earmark requests by every member of Congress.”

House Republicans’ voluntary one-year moratorium on earmarks will expire in March, conveniently just months after they expect to retake the lower chamber. “Washington Republicans have already broken several of their ‘Pledges,’ indicated they are going to abandon their earmark moratorium next year, and are now scrapping this website,” said a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

In a recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute, House Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) offered strong rhetoric on earmarks — “I believe it is our obligation to end earmarking as we know it” — but “did not offer any specifics as to how the GOP would reform the process of earmarking.” Nor did he actually promise to end earmarks if his party retakes the House, merely saying that “the future of the moratorium will be a collective decision, made by our members,” offering himself a helpful excuse should Republicans choose not extend the moratorium.

ThinkProgress went to Capitol Hill this week to see why Republicans congressmen were against including an earmark ban in the Pledge. What we found was collective apathy on the issue. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) told us tersely that “the pledge is a great beginning, and that’s all I have to say right now.” Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said an earmark moratorium that expires before Republicans would even take power was sufficient and there was no need to go further. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) refused to address the issue altogether.

Prospects for earmark reform aren’t much brighter among Senate Republicans either. In an interview with National Review Online, Tea Party Godfather Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said earmark reform wasn’t included in the GOP Pledge because “there was some pushback from the Senate.” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) echoed this view in an interview with Fox News yesterday, telling host Neil Cavuto that Republican leaders in the Senate would not eliminate earmarks until they were forced to do so by rank-and-file members:

CAVUTO: But I don’t hear it out of the leadership. So I suspect, when I hear your party leadership rallying against earmarks, not under our watch, and then someone puts a question to them, so, will you end them all, well, well, not so fast. So, I hear the same B.S. out of them.

COBURN: [Americans] are going to see the foolishness that goes on up here, and rightly so. And that is why the vast majority of the people who are running on my side of the aisle for the Senate have said, I am not doing any earmarks. And that is 11 out of the 15 that are running. So, if we get those 11 people here, that’s going to make a big difference. And then we’re going to have leadership that is going to say that.

CAVUTO: If Mitch McConnell has not ruled out earmarks, would you vote for him to be your majority leader should Republicans assume control of the Senate?

COBURN: I think what has to happen is, we need to have the caucus say we’re not going to do earmarks. And when we vote that, then it is not going to happen. And he’s going to follow our lead.

An earmark ban wasn’t included in the pledge for a simple reason: establishment Republicans still love earmarks. Consequently, support for pork barrel appropriations is unlikely to abate should Republicans win control of Congress in November. Two weeks ago, Politico reported that “with their eyes on a House majority, Republicans are leaving the door open to allowing earmarks after a one-year party-imposed moratorium.” A week later, GOP whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) confirmed that Republicans are eyeing a return of earmarks if they retake the majority.

Though some Republicans like Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) have waged a lonely fight in the GOP against earmarks, only recently have other Republicans signed on to the issue with an election-year stunt. However, when the GOP had an opportunity to implement this idea in their Pledge, they balked. It’s increasingly clear that the House GOP won’t heed the words of country music star Toby Keith: “a little less talk, a lot more action.“

Lobbyists have long supported the practice of “earmarking,” a maneuver that allows lobbyists to cajole members of Congress to add pet projects to appropriations bills. While it’s no surprise that the lobbyist-authored document drops any discussion of “earmarking,” it is nevertheless an interesting pivot for Republicans.

On March 11, 2010, House Republicans adopted a one-year moratorium on all earmarks, urging Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in Congress “to follow their lead.” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) touted the decision as “an important step toward showing the American people we’re serious about reform.” While Democrats announced a ban on earmarks for private companies the day before, Boehner wanted to “put [all earmarks] on the line to win” the November elections. Republicans touted their measure as a message that they were going to “cleanse themselves” of corruption and bring about “a culture of change”:

– Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA): “People are so upset. Earmarks are such a symbol of the problem in Washington. We know the moratorium doesn’t fix the problem but it certainly is the beginning. It’s the recognition that we need to change the culture.” [Link]

– Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI): “The way I see it with this earmark moratorium is we have finally begun to cleanse ourselves of the corruption that occurred when Republicans were in the majority.” [Link]

– Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): “On the flight in this week, it just happened that sitting next to me was Gary Hart. We were having a kind of generational talk about Washington. And one of the things he pointed out was wrong with Washington was earmarks. He said Republicans and Democrats had both been poisoned by earmarks…we lost our principles.” [Link]

– Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): “An earmark moratorium, until the abuses can be stopped, is the strongest signal that Republicans understand the spending mistakes of the past and can govern in a fiscally responsible manner in the future…this moratorium shows we are dead serious about ‘rebooting the computer’ and cleaning out the junk in the earmark system.” [Link]

– Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN): Republicans are determined “to end earmarks as we know them.” [Link]

Given the lobbyist influence in drafting the “Pledge to America,” we’ve mocked up a page that the GOP leadership should consider including in the document:

The thing that would reduce earmarking would be the reverse of transparency. If you couldn’t brag to your constituents about all the bacon you’d brought home, then there’d be less reason for members to spend their time on it.

Mr. Murtha, a 76-year-old Marine veteran schooled in the blunt-knuckle deal-making that defined politics here, is contrition-free when it comes to his success.

“If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district,” Mr. Murtha said. “My job as a member of Congress is to make sure that we take care of what we see is necessary. Not the bureaucrats who are unelected over there in whatever White House, whether it’s Republican or Democrat. Those bureaucrats would like to control everything. Every president would like to have all the power and not have Congress change anything. But we’re closest to the people.”

Murtha’s remarks recall another one of CREW’s most corrupt lawmakers, Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who defended his controversial earmarks on the House floor in 2007. “I was always proud of my earmarks. I believe in earmarks, always have, as long as they are exposed. But don’t you ever call that a scandal,” said Young.

I think we all understand the dynamic by which the earmark for your district is a wasteful boondoggle, whereas the earmark for my district is addressing serious problems in a concrete way. But the way this game is supposed to work is that we both vote for the bill since we’re both more interested in claiming credit for our own project than we are in complaining about each other’s projects.

It’s win-win, basically, though it does result in a structural misallocation of funds toward regions that happen to have politically powerful elected officials.

With the stimulus bill, though, the opposition (mostly Republicans, but but Democrats too) perfected a new approach to this. First the denounced the whole thing as unnecessary wasteful spending. Then they all voted against it. Then many members turned around, went home, and started bragging about all the good stuff they’d brought home to their district. Now it seems that Reps. Pete Hoekstra and Mario Diaz-Balert are up to the same tricks with the omnibus appropriations bill.

It’s not surprising, I guess; having gotten away with this once in the future probably everyone will be doing it.