Last month, Montana’s lone Congressman, Republican Denny Rehberg, announced that he was joining his House colleagues in swearing off earmarks for a year. Rehberg’s office told the Associated Press that he didn’t know how many earmarks, exactly, he requested last year. OpenSecrets.org places the total at more than $51 million.
In 2009, also according to OpenSecrets.org, Montana ranked the 11th highest, on a per capita basis, for federal earmark spending. The top five: Alaska, Mississippi, North Dakota, Hawaii and District of Columbia.
How the moratorium will affect federal dollars funneling to Montana is, so far, unclear. But already some House Republicans are breaking ranks with their party and defying what was supposed to be a unilateral ban on pork. <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/03/rep_anh_joseph_cao_opts_out_of.html" title="From the Times-Picayune:”>From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
In the House, the two parties have been engaged in a competition to stake what they consider the higher ground on earmark reform. First, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., announced a ban on earmarks that directed spending to for-profit entities. The House Republican conference then quickly one-upped the Democrats by adopting a one-year moratorium on all earmark requests.
But three Republicans refused to go along: Cao and Reps. Don Young of Alaska and Ron Paul of Texas.
Yes, that Ron Paul, the one who gained conservative grassroots support during the 2008 presidential campaign for his staunch support of small government. Here’s how his spokeswoman explained the move:
Rachel Mills said he thinks Washington already extracts too much money from his constituents, and “part of his job is to work hard in Washington, D.C., to get that money back to those constituents in any form that he can.” She said Paul also believes that earmarking is more transparent than the regular budget process because you know exactly where the money goes and that it doesn’t affect the total amount appropriated by one dime.