GOP senators kill spending bill over $8 billion in earmarks

Republicans on Friday reveled in a victory over government spending that showcased their resolve in the fight over the federal purse.

By killing a $1.3-trillion spending bill, the GOP extinguished a sheaf of earmarked expenditures and drew in straying GOP colleagues — even those who had inserted the earmarks and helped write the bill, which would have funded the government through September 2011.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) withdrew the bill Thursday night in the face of Republican threats to consume the rest of the session debating it. He agreed to offer a slimmed-down, stopgap measure that would put most major spending decisions in the hands of the next Congress, when Republicans will control the House and hold more seats in the Senate.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a tea party favorite, gave rare kudos to his party. “It’s a good day to be a Republican,” he said.

The defunct legislation was laced with $8 billion for lawmakers’ earmarks — usually directed spending on roads, infrastructure and parochial projects which have come to symbolize government waste.

It included $6.5 million to help fund a project in downtown Los Angeles to connect light-rail lines and help pay for engineering for the subway extension to the city’s Westside; $5 million for repairs to Alcatraz, the notorious prison turned tourist attraction; and $750,000 for the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail. The bill also included $300,000 sought by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Franciscofor a “green jobs” training program.

But, without Senate votes to pass the bill, Democratic lawmakers on Friday turned to a painful plan B — a measure to fund the government at current levels for the immediate future. Without action, government funding was set to expire at midnight Saturday.

“It’s not enough to just hold the line on spending; we need to cut spending,” said Rep. John A. Boehner (R- Ohio), the minority leader and soon to be speaker of the House. “We’d like to do it as soon as possible.”

Boehner says he wants to trim government expenditures to 2008 levels.

The demise of the so-called omnibus spending bill was the first major legislative victory for the tea party movement and conservative advocates.

Responding to alerts from conservative Washington advocacy groups such as FreedomWorks and Liberty Central, activists sent a torrent of emails and phone calls urging Republicans to oppose the bill. They called it a “liberal wish list” of goodies that Democrats were trying to sneak through before heading home for the holidays.

But GOP senators, too, had requested hundreds of millions of dollars for home-state projects. Earmarks came even from members who swore off the practice just last month. Red-faced, they argued they had sought the money before the self-imposed ban.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate minority leader, had requested $113 million in earmarks, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Reid told reporters on Thursday. “I’ll bet if you went to ‘H’ in the dictionary and found ‘hypocrite,’ under that would be people who ask for earmarks who vote against them.”

The earmarks amounted to less than 1% of the overall bill, which also included funding for military spending and for implementing the new healthcare and financial regulatory laws.

Republican rejection of the bill offered evidence that grassroots conservatives’ calls for government belt-tightening may be changing the culture in Congress — at least temporarily.

Exhibit A was the decision by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) to oppose the bill. The six-term senator and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee usually is a proud defender of his ability to direct federal money home to Mississippi. Cochran had secured more than $561 million in earmarks in the bill, according to estimates from Taxpayers for Common Sense.

But on Thursday, he and all the other GOP members of the Appropriations Committee agreed to vote against the bill.

“I would like to note that we just saw a rather extraordinary event on the floor of the Senate,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after Reid withdrew the bill.

“For those who don’t understand what just happened, did we just win?” Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) interrupted.

“I think there is very little doubt,” McCain answered.

khennessey@tribune.com