Even GOP says McCain must accept earmarks (caught lying again!)

[bushisanidiot]

John McCain knows DAMN WELL he would have to sign off on earmarks, but he continues to lie to the american people just like George "Read My Lips, No New Taxes" Bush Sr. did.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080917/pl_politico/13525

"Even GOP says McCain must accept earmarks Martin Kady II
Wed Sep 17, 5:42 AM ET

Out on the stump, John McCain gets wild applause each time he promises as president to veto every spending bill that contains an earmark.

But McCain will find it almost impossible to live up to his vow, and gridlock would result if Congress refused to go along with such an executive branch power grab.

And that’s what members of McCain’s own party are saying.

“I don’t think it’s the right approach,” said Rep. Ralph Regula, an Ohio Republican who has spent three decades on the House Appropriations Committee. “I haven’t done an earmark I wouldn’t be happy to have spread all over the front pages of the paper.”

Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), a former Appropriations Committee chairman, warns that both parties in Congress would protect their power against a no-earmark policy.

“The Constitution is very specific and very clear about who appropriates money,” Young said. “Not all earmarks are pork-barrel spending.”

McCain has billed himself and his running mate as mavericks who will stand up to foolish spending.

The campaign has pitched Sarah Palin as a governor who said “no thanks” to an earmark for Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere,” although press reports have established that she supported the earmark before she opposed it.

Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican and member of the Appropriations Committee, says he understands McCain’s desire to crack down on wasteful spending and kill the latest “bridge to nowhere.” But if a McCain administration suddenly started shooting down every spending bill, lawmakers on both sides might revolt.

<snip>

The promise to veto any bill with congressional earmarks doesn’t take into account executive branch earmarks, which come by the scores in the president’s annual budget request. McCain has not promised to get rid of the executive branch’s line-item spending requests.

“What we would be doing is handing over all of our authority to the administration,” said Kirstin Brost, a spokeswoman for House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.). “We’d be saying the White House, in its judgments, would decide what every community in America needs.”

<snip>

“The idea that an all-knowing, all-powerful executive bureaucracy is more trustworthy than the elected representatives of the people when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars challenges the most basic tenet of our political system,” (Robert) Byrd said in a statement. “An earmark is an economic need that many times falls between the cracks of the Washington bureaucracy. When that happens, the people we represent cannot call some unelected bureaucrat in the White House budget office.”

Regula, a longtime appropriator who has been in the minority, the majority and back in the minority in Congress, says the endgame is simple — a compromise with the new president, whoever that is.

“There are a lot of campaign promises that will come up against reality,” Regula said. “It’s one thing to go and say it on the trail. It’s another thing to do it in the real world.”"