Salon.com: President Obama urges pork reform and signs a bill with earmarks in it on the same day. Republicans make an unconvincing show of outrage.

Ordinarily, calling for a reform of the earmark process on the very day that you sign billions of dollars’ worth of lawmakers’ pet earmarks into law would be a tough act to pull off. But Obama’s Republican critics, who have been howling about the earmarks in the spending bill for weeks now, earning as much cable airtime as a missing child with their semi-feigned fiscal outrage, didn’t exactly go all out to stop him. John Boehner’s spokeswoman mocked Obama for promoting earmark reform while signing a bill into law that contained 9,000 earmarks, but the GOP effort was more theatrical than substantive. That’s because the GOP has its own porky problems: 40 percent of the earmarks in the legislation were requested by Republicans, including some of the very Republicans who were shocked — shocked — by the price tag of the spending bill. For example, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., voted against the bill, which he called “bloated,” even though part of the bloat included $249 million in earmarks he himself had requested. As President Obama noted, “I [find] it ironic that some of those who railed the loudest against this bill because of earmarks actually inserted earmarks of their own — and will tout them in their own states and districts.” — [ READ MORE ]

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