Rick Santorum knocked everyone for a loop this week, not just with his victory in Missouri but with the landslide size of the thing. Although nonbinding, Missouri’s primary, coupled with wins in Minnesota and Colorado as well as his earlier squeak-out in Iowa, boosts the value of his stock.
The question that lingers over Santorum is whether he represents a new way of doing business in America, or whether he’s too much a part of the pay-to-play lobby-and-lawmaker culture to effect genuine change.
An analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense calculated that Santorum helped secure more than $1 billion in earmarks during his Senate career from 1995 through 2006.
As a senator, Santorum secured millions for military contractors in his state, as well as a $100 million no-interest loan to help build a coal-to-liquid fuel plant in Pennsylvania, and lots of smaller goodies, such as $200,000 to help build an exhibit to house polar bears at the Pittsburgh Zoo.
The New York Times reported: “In just one piece of legislation, the defense appropriations bill for the 2006 fiscal year, Mr. Santorum helped secure $124 million in federal financing for 54 earmarks, according to a tally by Taxpayers for Common Sense. ... In that year’s election cycle, Mr. Santorum’s Senate campaign committee and his ‘leadership PAC’ took in more than $200,000 in contributions from people associated with the companies that benefited or their lobbyists.”
Santorum is now saying the practice of earmarks needs to be suspended, and he wants the focus shifted from that to what he calls the real “elephant in the room” — entitlement reform.
Earmarks aren’t the biggest problem in America, to be sure, but to a debt-saddled nation, their rampant abuse symbolizes an addiction that IS the problem.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, who has crusaded against earmarks and now supports Mitt Romney, calls earmarks “a gateway drug to corruption.”
America needs to elect someone who will do to Washington’s spending addiction what Carry Nation did to the saloons.
None of the front-runners so far — of either stripe — is making a case for real change.
Our View: Santorum's Achilles' ear (Joplin Globe)
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