McCain on the defensive about pet projects

updated 3:23 p.m. ET June 29, 2008

GEE'S BEND, Ala. - John McCain squinted in the midday sunshine as he crossed the meandering Alabama River aboard the Gee's Bend ferry, smiling at a dozen elderly black women who clasped his hands and crooned gospel hymns.

The ferry began running in 2006 with $3 million in federal dollars — money the senator voted against — four decades after whites eliminated ferry service to stop black residents from crossing to the county seat to register to vote.

The singing ladies didn't ask McCain about the vote when he visited two months ago, but after he reached the far shore, reporters grilled him about it.

The Arizona senator has spent most of his career on the attack against wasteful federal spending, a crusade that earned him a reputation as a watchdog of taxpayer dollars. Now McCain finds himself on the defensive as he campaigns for president in places where people consider the dollars necessary.

McCain found himself on the defensive again this month in the Everglades. He wanted to talk about his support for the environment. Instead, he got question after question about his opposition to $2 million in federal funding to restore Florida's River of Grass.

Exasperated, McCain explained the money was part of a massive bill stuffed with pet projects that clearly weren't essential, such as a museum about the Mississippi River.

"Why should we even consider a museum in Mississippi on the same level as the Everglades?" he told reporters as his campaign bus rolled away from Everglades Safari Park. "Smart people in Florida know that there are X amount of tax dollars in Washington. If you spend it on museums, you're not spending it on the Everglades."

Crusade began with line-item veto
McCain's crusade started with the line-item veto.

McCain, newly elected to the Senate, jumped aboard an effort by Republican fiscal conservatives to pass a line-item veto giving the president authority to cancel specific provisions — namely, wasteful dollars — without vetoing an entire bill.

A history buff, McCain asked his staff to bone up on the time-honored Washington tradition of tucking money into spending bills for pet projects back home, without any government review of whether the projects are needed. Aides learned the practice, known as earmarking, went back many decades, beginning with boat locks along the country's rivers and lighthouses dotting the coasts.

He also had aides ferret out current-day earmarks, and when he saw the list, McCain was incredulous. He strode to the floor of the Senate to read the list into the Congressional Record, much to the annoyance of colleagues unused to public scrutiny of their pet projects.

Thus began "the scrub," McCain's effort to expose every earmark in every spending bill. They weren't easy to find; earmarks often are added late at night, when the Senate is still in session but when most lawmakers have gone home. McCain stationed aides on the floor to inspect each amendment as it was offered.

In the Senate, an institution where comity and collegiality rule, McCain was not winning popularity contests. His bull-in-a-china-shop tactics ignited a feud with the Appropriations Committee members responsible for most of the earmarks.

The feud simmers to this day. Earlier this year, the senior Republican on the panel, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney over McCain. Cochran told The Boston Globe the thought of McCain as president "sends a cold chill down my spine."

Yet McCain also won some friends, including Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who also would work with him on campaign finance reform. Staffers from Feingold's office worked alongside McCain's on those long nights on the Senate floor.

Some earmarks worthy
Often on the campaign trail, McCain finds himself declaring some earmark or another to be worthy, if only it had gone through the regular budget process.

Would he cut aid to Israel and military housing, both paid with earmarks? "Of course not," McCain said on ABC's "This Week."

McCain maintains the problem is that Congress is adding earmarks furtively, outside the regular spending process, without a formal review or competition to decide whether one project is more deserving than another. Scattered throughout the list of worthy projects are a host of silly sounding ones, such as the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska and the DNA study of bears in Montana.

"If they are worthy programs, they can be authorized and appropriated in a New York minute," McCain told reporters in Allentown, Pa. "If they are worthy projects, I know that they would be funded. It's the process that I object to."

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