MAN, IS JAKE TAPPER HAVING FUN...:

President Obama to Sign Pork-Laden Omnibus Spending Bill (Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller, March 02, 2009, Political Punch)

Obama administration officials Sunday announced that despite expressed "concerns" with the billions in earmarks contained in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill -- and campaign pledges to "slash earmarks by more than half" -- the President would sign the bill.

Taxpayers for Common Sense says the bill contains 8,570 earmarks at a cost of $7.7 billion. An estimated 60% of the earmarks are from Democrats, while Republicans requested the remaining 40%. [...]

The President's assertion that he hadn't requested any earmarks in his previous two years in the Senate seemed under question last week when his name turned up attached to an earmark along with three dozen other senators who wrote a letter advocating a vocational training program for native Americans in North Dakota and New Mexico. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that there was "no funding level" mentioned in the letter, so the president's name should not have been cited as an earmark sponsor.

"The President, as a senator, did not request earmarks for the final two years he was in the Senate," Gibbs said.

A spokesman for the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday said the president's name would be excised from the congressional report identifying earmarks and their sponsors, Congressional Quarterly reported.