Subject: [big campaign] "As a First-Term Senator, McCain Railed Against His Own Pork"
From: "David S. Bennahum" <[email-masked]>
To: Big Campaign <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:34:55 -0400
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Pork lover:

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/5993/as-a-first-term-senator-mccain-railed-against-his-own-pork
As a First-Term Senator, McCain Railed Against His Own Pork
By Matthew DeLong 9/16/08 8:58 AM

On the campaign trail, Sen. John McCain frequently decries earmarks  
and pork-barrel legislation, proudly bragging that he has never  
requested a single earmark for his home state of Arizona. However, a  
news article and a scathing editorial from The Arizona Republic during  
his first-term as the state’s junior senator reveal that McCain did,  
in fact, go outside the normal legislative process to secure funding  
for at least one pet project for Arizona. He also supported  
appropriations for at least two more — three projects that, much to  
his embarrassment, he later railed against as “pork.”

In 1991, McCain was embroiled in the The Keating Five Scandal, in  
which he and four other senators were implicated in a corruption  
investigation connected to the Savings & Loan crisis. Though McCain  
was cleared of wrongdoing in August, he was reprimanded by the Senate  
Ethics Committee for exercising poor judgment for meeting with federal  
regulators on behalf of one of his major fund-raisers, Charles Keating  
Jr., the chairman of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. Keating  
would spend four and a half years in prison for fraud and racketeering  
following the bank’s failure.

Facing re-election the following year, McCain sought to salvage his  
damaged reputation by re-branding himself as a champion of government  
reform and a foe of wasteful spending. According to the article from  
The Arizona Republic dated June 14, 1991, McCain joined with two other  
senators and nine House members June 13 to introduce legislation to  
rescind more than $1 billion in funding for 325 federal pork-barrel  
projects in the 1991 budget, but had not yet been spent.

     “Listen, my friends, the system is broke, and this is the way to  
start fixing it,” McCain announced at a news conference. “There may be  
legitimate projects on this list, but I assure you, they are the  
exception and not the rule.”

According to the article, within hours of the news conference,  
McCain’s press secretary, Scott Celley, announced three Arizona  
projects on the list “could be ‘justified’ and ‘would pass muster’ if  
they went through the traditional process of hearings.”

In an interview, McCain said, “I’m not criticizing the projects, I’m  
criticizing the process. You can make a big-deal story about John  
McCain opposing three Arizona projects. I’m sure it will make good  
copy.”

There was just one problem. McCain had circumvented the “traditional  
process of hearings” to secure the funding for one of the Arizona pork  
projects he was now criticizing, and supported the other two.

     Among the projects that made McCain’s “pork list” were the  
construction of a forestry-science center at Northern Arizona  
University, the expansion of a border-crossing station at Mariposa, 10  
miles west of Nogales, and the paving of a road in the Black Mesa area  
of the Hopi Indian Reservation, which for generations has been at the  
center of a land dispute between the Hopis and Navajos.

     The projects were called pork because they were not subject to  
hearings, were awarded without competitive bidding, or were of purely  
local interest and not of national importance, among other reasons.

     “The funds for the dubious local projects were ‘snuck through’  
the normal budget process,” a McCain news release said.

     However, McCain, along with Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii,  
chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, wrote a  
letter in July 1990 to Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., chairman of an  
Appropriations subcommittee that oversees transportation funds,  
specifically asking for $5.5 million for the Black Mesa Road…

     The project was given $4.7 million, apparently through actions by  
Lautenberg outside the normal legislative process.

     “It seems pretty weird ,” said Bob Maynes, press secretary for  
Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., who is increasingly at odds with  
McCain. “I just don’t understand it. He (McCain) appears to have done  
exactly what he is criticizing.”

The article also notes that Celley, McCain’s press secretary, said  
McCain had supported the NAU forestry center, but pointed to $4.5  
million appropriated for its construction from the Federal Buildings  
Fund, as pork. Celley said McCain also supported the $10.6 million  
expansion of the Mariposa border-crossing station.

     McCain said he didn’t know what the Arizona projects were and  
said he would not comment on their merits.

     “I have no comment, because I do not know if they are good or bad  
or indifferent,” McCain said. “They might be the most good and  
valuable project that all civilization rests on, I don’t know, but if  
they did not go through the correct process, then I think they are  
wrong.”

According to the article, this was apparently not the first time  
McCain had gone around the normal legislative process to fund pet  
projects.

     Celley admitted that McCain has worked in the past to push  
appropriations through in whatever manner was necessary.

     “We have worked for them (appropriations),” he said. “Letters  
were written about these projects, and the senator may have talked  
with people to work their way through.”

A June 15, 1991 editorial from The Republic recounted the episode,  
lambasting McCain’s hypocrisy.

     While Mr. McCain spoke [at the news conference], a news release  
from his office thundered that “the funds for the dubious local  
projects were ‘snuck through’ the normal budget process.” In other  
words, these boondoggles had bypassed public hearings, the preferred  
practice for all 535 members when it comes to funding home-district  
projects that cannot stand on their own merits.

     Much to his discomfort, Mr. McCain subsequently learned from a  
reporter that three Arizona projects were to be found on the  
diabolical list. In fact, Mr. McCain himself had sought funding for  
one of them, $4.7 million for the Turquoise Trail road, which would  
link Navajo and Hopi Indian communities.

     “Oh, my God, is there three?” a chagrined Mr. McCain sputtered.  
“Oh…really? Is there really three in there?…I’m just shocked.”

     Later on, the senator averred that what was really at issue was  
the “process,” not the projects themselves, although in the earlier  
news release he described the projects as “dubious.” Finally, Mr.  
McCain even back-pedaled on whether they actually had “snuck through”  
the process.

     Had Mr. McCain attacked the process and even singled out those  
three Arizona projects as examples of extravagant spending, he could  
have made an important point. Instead, he was left defending his pet  
projects while criticizing everyone else’s pork-barreling. And that is  
precisely why Congress cannot get spending under control.

Even on McCain’s signature issue — his supposed career-long opposition  
to pork — he is not telling the truth.

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