GOP’s promise to end use of earmarks meets its demise. How unexpected....or not

[TalkingDog]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/11/28/gops_promise_to_end_use_of_earmarks_meets_its_demise/


WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans’ ban on earmarks — money included in a bill by a lawmaker to benefit a home-state project or interest — was short-lived.

Only three days after GOP senators and senators-elect renounced earmarks, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the number two Republican in the Senate, got a provision for a whopping $200 million to settle an Arizona Indian tribe’s water rights claim against the government.

Kyl slipped the measure into a larger bill sought by President Obama and passed by the Senate on Nov. 19 to settle claims by black farmers and American Indians against the federal government. Kyl’s office insists the measure is not an earmark, and the House didn’t deem it one when it considered a version earlier this year.

But it meets the know-it-when-you-see-it test, critics said. Under Senate rules, an earmark is a spending item inserted “primarily at the request of a senator’’ that goes “to an entity, or targeted to a specific state.’’