WEEKLY EDITORIAL RECAP

THURSDAY

OBAMA, CLINTON OPPOSe EARMARKS (wink, wink)

The Constitution makes it clear that the Congress may allocate public moneys only to advance the "general" welfare. Spending $200 million from the national treasury to build a bridge to an island with 50 inhabitants in far western Alaska does the typical taxpayer of Alabama or Arkansas no "general" good. Neither does an "earmark" to buy a bird-counting computer for UNLV -- stuffed by Nevada Sen. Harry Reid as an earmark plum into the spending allocation of the Department of Energy, not generally charged with counting birds, anywhere. ...

In a hollow political gesture -- because few new spending bills are likely to be enacted in an election year, anyway -- a few Senate Republicans endeavored last week to enact a one-year moratorium on such pork spending. In the end, Arizona's John McCain, the apparent GOP nominee for president, could attract only 25 fellow Republicans to embrace the symbolic hiatus in the ongoing larceny. Three lonely Democrats joined the reformers as their bid failed, 71-29.

Safe in the knowledge the measure was going to crash and burn anyway, Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- both of whom cheerfully toot the whistle for whole trainloads of porkfat dispatched to their home states annually -- were among the three Democrats voting for a temporary halt to the massive misappropriations. ...

So, shall Sens. Clinton and Obama now be allowed to contend they're "just as opposed to that terrible earmark pork as John McCain (wink wink, nudge nudge)"?

Not quite. Sen. McCain has vowed that, if elected president, he would veto any spending bill containing such earmarks.

If Sens. Clinton and Obama share an equal devotion to accountability, frugality and constitutional rectitude, let them similarly vow to veto any such spending bill to come before them.