OBAMA LIED, DEMOCRATS SLIDE:

Does Obama Have a Double Standard on Earmarks? (Jay Newton-Small and Michael Scherer, Feb. 26, 2009, TIME)

On Tuesday evening, when President Barack Obama declared before a joint session of Congress that "we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks," House Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi popped like jackrabbits out of their seats for a standing ovation. On Wednesday, those same House Democrats led by Pelosi passed a budget with, by some counts, nearly 9,000 earmarks, worth an estimated $7.7 billion. [...]

And while the Obama Administration is turning a blind eye to the 2009 earmarks, White House officials say they fully expect Congress to live up to his campaign pledge of reducing earmarks to below 1994 levels — when the GOP took control of the House — or less than $7.8 billion a year. "They have got to draw a line in the sand, and they didn't do it here," says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "They have got to draw it in 2010 or it's irrelevant, whatever the promises are." (The Democratic leadership estimates there are only $3.8 billion earmarks in the bill, while Ellis's nonpartisan watchdog group includes Army Corps of Engineers projects to reach a total of $7.7 billion — a figure still under Obama's target 1994 figure of $7.8 billion.)

So not only is it packed with pork but he specifically approved that much pork ahead of time?

MORE:
President and His Inner Circle Have Earmarks in Omnibus (Jonathan Allen, 2/26/09, CQ)

Funny how items show up in spending bills without any notice — like an earmark for a president who promised not to seek any.

President Obama, who took a no-earmark pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens of cosponsors of a $7.7 million set-aside in the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill (HR 1105) passed by the House on Wednesday.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 26, 2009 8:19 AM