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Opinion: McCain urges Obama to veto Rahm Emanuel’s $8.5 million in earmarks

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The Senate has started debating a $410-billion emergency spending bill, full of the very earmarks that candidate Barack Obama railed about on the campaign trail.

And, reports the Seattle Times, 16 of those projects, worth $8.5 million, were put in the bill by then Chicago congressman, now White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Among the goodies: money for a Chicago planetarium and streets in a Chicago suburb. Aside from Emanuel’s special projects, there are 9,000 earmarks for domestic projects in a bill designed to keep government funded through Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year.

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Emanuel, on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation,’ dismissed the bill as ‘last year’s business,’ since most of it was written last year. And the White House has hewed to that line -- arguing that the president will hold his nose and sign this left-over-from-last-year monstrosity but insist on no earmarks in future spending bills, as he did on the just-passed $787-billion stimulus package.

But Sen John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama’s rival in the presidential race, was having none of it.

Yesterday on the Senate floor he blasted the Obama White House for hypocrisy.

“If it seems like I’m angry, it’s because I am,” McCain said, taking the White House to task for treating the bill as leftover business — and not subject to the full measure of earmark reform promised by candidate Obama.

“Last year’s business?” McCain asked. “The president will sign this appropriations bill into law. It is the president’s business. It is the president of the United States’ business. It is the president of the United States’ business to do what he said — stated — when we were in debate seeking the support of the American people — where he said he would work to eliminate earmarks.” He concluded: ‘So much for change.’

Offering an amendment to gut the bill, one he concedes is unlikely to pass, McCain was back on the floor again today, imploring the president to veto the pork-laden legislation.

‘This practice has corrupted people, that’s why we have former members in jail, that’s why the American people are angry at the way we do business,’ he said. Noting that earmark projects are sometimes added to the bills even after they are signed, McCain asked his colleagues, ‘When do we turn off the spigots? Haven’t we learned anything? Bills like this jeopardize our future.’

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-- Johanna Neuman

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