I once wrote a spending bill thiiis big.

With GOP colleagues like Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert, Rick Santorum was very much apart of that infamous class. For Delay, he was then ,just as he is now, an outspoken supporter of earmarks. When the new GOP class promised to curb earmark spending, Delay was quick to voice his opposition.

“I am not one of those guys. The purse strings belong to the House of Representatives, and earmarks are one of the ways to keep the executive-branch honest,” DeLay said. “Why would you give up your responsibility and your authority to the executive branch?”

As for Dennis Hastert, the former longest serving speaker in Republican history left a long legacy of earmarks and questionable deals (but not illegal from Congress’s exemption to insider trading laws) that netted both him and his associates major profits. The story goes that Hastert owned some land that was of minimal worth, so he used appropriated funds stuffed inside a transportation bill that funded a highway project near the property. The new access road caused the value to increase. Hastert then later sold the property for a substantial profit, clearing $2 million. That seems easier than bending down to pick up a quarter on a sidewalk.

These were the dark days of “compassionate” conservatism, where wild discretionary spending was available for anyone in Congress with a pen. For Rick Santorum, he used his pen towards the sum of at least $1 billion in pork-barrel projects.

In the 2003-2004 session of Congress, Santorum sponsored or cosponsored 51 bills to increase spending, and failed to sponsor or co-sponsor even one spending cut proposal.  In his last Congress (2005-2006), he had one of the biggest spending agendas of any Republican — sponsoring more spending increases than Republicans Lisa Murkowski, Lincoln Chafee and Thad Cochran or Democrats Herb Kohl, Evan Bayh and Ron Wyden (Club for Growth).

His Senate career lasted from 1995 to 2007, and the Club for Growth estimated during that time Santorum “requested billions of dollars for pork projects” (National Review).

Santorum’s remarks addressing his earmark legacy sounds exactly like Tom Delay’s defense of the practice.

“We appropriate funds,” Santorum said about Congress’s role in an interview Wednesday with CNN’s John King. “And as Ron Paul did, as Jim DeMint did, as just about, I think, every single member of Congress did, when you go to Congress, you make sure that when taxes go from your state to Washington, D.C., you fight to make sure you get your fair share back.”Later on in the interview, he added, “I also said that when earmarks got abusive, that we should end them.”

And in 2009, he said, “I’m not saying necessarily earmarks are bad. I have had a lot of earmarks. In fact, I’m very proud of all the earmarks I’ve put in bills. I’ll defend earmarks.”

Nothing is abusive to the fox guarding the hen house. It’s always open season, and as long as Congress removes itself from legalities preventing insider trading and misappropriation of funds, there will never be a standard on when the practice becomes abusive. There are no better angles on Capitol Hill. Just ask Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona.

If you want some unambiguously good news, however, ignore the tax deal and celebrate the fact that Senator Harry Reid had to give up his attempt to enact a pork-filled, $1 trillion-plus spending bill. This “omnibus appropriation” not only had an enormous price tag, it also contained about 6,500 earmarks. As I explained in the New York Post yesterday, earmarks are “…special provisions inserted on behalf of lobbyists to benefit special interests. The lobbyists get big fees, the interest groups get handouts and the politicians get rewarded with contributions from both. It’s a win-win-win for everyone — except the taxpayers who finance this carousel of corruption.”

This sleazy process traditionally has enjoyed bipartisan support, and many Republican Senators initially were planning to support the legislation notwithstanding the voter revolt last month. But the insiders in Washington underestimated voter anger at bloated and wasteful government. Thanks to talk radio, the Internet (including sites like this one), and a handful of honest lawmakers, Reid’s corrupt legislation suddenly became toxic.

The resulting protests convinced GOPers, even the big spenders from the Appropriations Committee, that they could no longer play the old game of swapping earmarks for campaign cash. This is a remarkable development and a huge victory for the Tea Party movement. Here’s part of the Washington Post report on this cheerful development.

Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned their efforts to approve a comprehensive funding bill for the federal government after Republicans rebelled against its $1.2 trillion cost and the inclusion of nearly 7,000 line-item projects for individual lawmakers. …Instead, a slimmed-down resolution that would fund the government mostly at current levels will come before the Senate, and Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it will pass by Saturday. …The majority leader’s surrender on the spending bill marked a final rebuke for this Congress to the old-school system of funding the government, in which the barons of the Appropriations Committee decided which states would receive tens of millions of dollars each year. …Almost every Senate Republican had some favor in the bill, but as voter angst about runaway deficits grew before the midterm elections, Republicans turned against the earmark practice.

This is a very positive development heading into next year, but it is not a permanent victory. Some Republicans are true believers in the cause of limited government, but there are still plenty of corrupt big spenders as well as some Bush-style “compassionate conservatives” who think buying votes with other people’s money somehow makes one a caring person.

In other words, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Partiers have won an important battle, but this is just one skirmish in a long war. If we want to save America from becoming another Greece, we better make sure that we redouble our efforts next year. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

The video is very well done, but I feel compelled to make one additional observation. Pork-barrel spending is outrageous, and examples of government waste are useful to educate voters about profligacy in Washington, but all government spending has negative effects on the economy.

Regardless of whether it is a corrupt earmark or a squeaky-clean appropriation, all spending must be financed by taxes, debt, or printing money – and all these options are bad for economic performance. Here’s a video that gives the theoretical explanation of why govenrment spending harms economic performance, and here’s a follow-up video providing empirical evidence about the damaging impact of too much government.

By the way, Michelle’s first video also used the man-on-the-street theme, asking people during the stimulus debate whether they would rather keep more of their income instead of having politicians increase the burden of government spending. It’s also worth watching and contemplating how much better off we would be if the politicians had listened to her message.

The budget relies on $2.7 billion in federal aid, including $850 million in Medicaid funds (FMAP) that has yet to pass Congress.  Indeed, no one believes Pennsylvania will get that much, if any, as the legislation doesn’t have enough support in the US Senate.  Gov. Rendell, along with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, New York Gov. David Paterson and others were in Washington last week to lobby for more federal aid.

The state will use $121 million from Tobacco Settlement Funds for teachers’ pensions, which will then be backfilled, and another $35 million from other one-time sources to balance the budget.   Still unresolved are a projected $4 billion annual pension contribution hike and a $3 billion Unemployment Compensation Fund deficit.

Finally, the budget deal includes increasing the debt ceiling for the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) by $600 million.

RACP (pronounced R-Cap) is effectively state borrowing for pork barrel projects.  RACP was created in 1993 with a debt limit of $700 million, but has been increased regularly, with the latest deal raising the ceiling to just over $4 billion. Separate legislation itemizes $300 million in new-debt financed projects under RACP, including:

• $10 million for “Philadelphia University, including the Arlen Specter Library.”
• $10 million for the “John P. Murtha Center for Public Policy.”
• Over $90 million in projects—one third of the total—for which the recipient is not even named, as reported by the news service Capitolwire (subscription).

With his final budget, Ed Rendell has both cemented his legacy—spending beyond his means while rewarding political allies with pork—and cemented two more monuments to Pennsylvania’s political aristocracy.

$445 million worth of congressional earmarks compromise the priorities of the Energy Department

$2.6 billion diverted from guns and ammunition for troops to pay for politicians’ pet projects

Two men imprisoned for skimming money from a $8.2 million congressional earmark funded through the Defense Department

Go fish: $1 million of stimulus funds spent to catch fish in Utah

The Federal Highway Administration urging localities to impose tolls on motorists who drive during rush hour

The Federal Highway Administration tells Indiana it has too many billboards along the state’s roads