Republicans Defend Palin’s Earmark History, Say She’s Changed

Leaders of the congressional Republican campaign against parochial pet projects in spending bills joined the party’s aggressive campaign to promote the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin on Wednesday, labelling the Alaska governor a “reformed earmarker,” who could be trusted to help trim wasteful spending from federal budgets.

“When it comes to earmarks, McCain-Palin is a reformer’s dream and a pork-barreler’s nightmare,” Rep. Jeb Hansarling of Texas said at a hastily-arranged news conference.

“There’s one person in this race who’s actually vetoed earmarks, and her name is Gov. Sarah Palin ,” said Hensarling, who chairs the Republican Study Commission, a group of fiscally conservative House members.

As an Arizona senator for two decades, McCain has lambasted colleagues in both parties with equal fervor for their pursuit of line-items in appropriations bills that commit slivers of the federal budget to public works back home, some of them with little evident merit. As president, he has said, he would have no hesitation to veto spending bills with such earmarks. “ John McCain was fighting wasteful government spending before fighting wasteful government spending was cool,” said Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona.

The news conference was arranged to tamp down any worries in fiscally conservative circles about Palin, who’s commitment to budget discipline has come under scrutiny in the week since she was tapped by McCain for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

When her nomination was announced Aug. 29, Palin declared that she had “told Congress ‘thanks, but no thanks’ on that Bridge to Nowhere” — a reference to the nearly $400 million appropriation for a bridge project to connect an island of 50 people to the mainland in Alaska, which became the focus of national ridicule and prompted a renewed congressional soul-searching about the propriety of earmarks. But, in fact, Palin supported the project as a candidate for governor and only turned against it after she took office, by which point it was no longer politically viable.