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According to the Associated Press, the much-vaunted Republican ban on earmarks lasted all of 72 hours. That is correct—it took just three days after the ban was announced for GOP Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the number two Republican in the chamber, to slip a $200 million earmark for a water project for his state into a $5 billion measure that passed the Senate.

The $5 billion will go mainly to pay reparations to Native Americans and African-Americans—two good causes that I know you join me in supporting.
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Kyl Hounded For $200M 'Earmark' -- But Experts Say It Doesn't Break GOP Ban

Evan McMorris-Santoro | November 24, 2010, 3:02PM


http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo...e-days-after-ban.php


There it is: Kyl put extra spending for his home state into a bill that went beyond what was originally requested. "Earmark!" the Democrats are shouting, followed almost immediately by, "Hypocrite!" (It should be noted that Democrats are deeply divided over earmarking, with Obama calling it a bad thing and most Democrats in Congress saying the practice is worthwhile).

Two anti-earmark watchdogs I spoke with today took something of a similar line -- saying that what Kyl did isn't earmarking in the official sense. But, one suggested, that may not matter as much as Kyl might hope it does.

"There's a lot of nuance and any comment you include from [us] should note that," Taxpayers for Common Sense vice president Steve Ellis told me. "We're into earmark shades of grey."

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) didn't see any nuance when he attacked the additional money added by Kyl. Here's what he said, according to the AP:

"I do know an earmark when I see it. And this, my friends, is an earmark," Leahy said in a prepared floor statement. He said Kyl's project would help the White Mountain Apaches "make snow at their ski resort, improve water flow to their casino and build fish hatcheries to improve local fish production."

"Those projects don't appear to be directly funded by the bill," the AP reports, "though the measure's wording is confusing."

Ellis said Leahy and the Democrats jumping on Kyl today may actually be jumping the gun instead.

"Despite Sen. Leahy's gleeful protestations to the contrary, there's no way Congress (Republican or Democrat) would consider this an official earmark -- too much money," he told me. The Government was going to have to pay the Arizona tribe at some point Ellis said, so "so Uncle Sam was going to be coming up with the cash whether or not Sen. Kyl got it in," Ellis said.

Ellis' group is vehemently anti-earmark, and he said that last year's federal budget had "$6 billion worth of provisions we considered an earmark that Congress did not." Kyl's addition to the settlement bill "leads you down the earmark path," Ellis said, but he added, "I don't think this would violate the Senate GOP moratorium, because that is based on the Senate earmark definition."

Citizens Against Government Waste, a conservative-leaning anti-earmark group whose distaste for the practice equals Taxpayers for Common Sense, didn't see the nuance that Ellis did. President Tom Schatz told me that what Kyl did wasn't an earmark -- in fact, he said it didn't even raise any hackles with his crew at all.
"Not from an earmarking standpoint, no," Shatz said. He added that Indian settlements are a "special issue" that need to be "dealt with."

"The Indian [settlement] stuff is complicated," he said. But whether what Kyl did ran afoul of the CAGW's 100% opposition to earmarking is less complicated, Schatz said.
"Nope," he said flatly. He pointed to the fact that the bill containing the additional funds passed the Senate unanimously (by voice vote) as evidence that Kyl's addition didn't violate the GOP earmark ban. Senators like Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) -- who are leading the charge against earmarking in the Senate -- would have raised the alarm if Kyl's additional funds broke the GOP's new rules.

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