GREENVILLE, S.C. – With Rick Santorum's rise in the GOP race comes a renewed debate over earmarks — putting South Carolina's U.S. senators squarely in the middle.
With earmarks now taboo within the conservative ranks of the Republican Party, Santorum is taking heat for his record of bringing home the bacon to Pennsylvania during his 16 years in Congress, which ended after the 2006 elections.
His response: Yeah, back in those days so did Jim DeMint, South Carolina's Tea Party-favorite junior senator.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is making the argument that in instances such as the funding of a study on the deepening of Charleston harbor, you want nothing more than to be able to tag funds.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who hopes to regain a foothold in the race at Santorum's expense, ran a TV ad in Iowa that portrayed Santorum as "feeding at the earmark trough in Congress," saying he "demanded more than $1 billion in earmarks" before voters "kicked him out of office in a landslide."
How accurate that figure is isn't easy to discern because Santorum left the Senate before lawmakers were required to start disclosing their earmarks in 2007, said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based non-profit, non-partisan budget watchdog group.
But the $1 billion figure is "pretty safe," considering how long Santorum was in the Senate, "including the go-go years for earmarking," Ellis told GreenvilleOnline.com.
Santorum and Pennsylvania's senior senator at the time, Arlen Specter, put out numerous joint press releases during those years trumpeting their success in funding projects in the state, Ellis said.
"Clearly, Sen. Specter did a lot of the lifting, but Santorum got a lot of the benefits," he said.
Among those earmarks was one for the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, a $398 million project in Alaska that was abandoned in 2005 after public opposition.
"People say that I voted for The Bridge to Nowhere. I did," Santorum said, The Des Moines Register reported.
"I went with the federalist argument, which is, 'Who am I in Pennsylvania to tell Alaska what their highway priorities should be?' You had a city that was separated from its airport, and of course in Alaska you have to travel by air, and you had to have a ferry. There were times when they couldn't get across."
Santorum defended his earmarks, citing some that he is proud of, such as providing federal funding for a regenerative medicine program in Pittsburgh for the Army, aimed at growing back fingers and organs, The Register reported.
"Go and look at the Constitution. Who has the responsibility to spend money? Clearly, in the Constitution it is the Congress,"Santorum told voters in Iowa. "Now, what has happened is that the system was abused and it got a bad name, and as a result of that, I have said, 'Look, the Congress has lost the public trust and they have to be suspended.' "
Santorum also secured $200,000 in federal money to help build an $18 million exhibit to house polar bears at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"If the pot of money is there, I'm going to make sure we get a piece of that money," the newspaper quoted Santorum as saying after a visit to the zoo in 2006.
DeMint's spokesman, Wesley Denton, said the senator wouldn't comment on the earmarks issue in relation to the presidential primary.
He referred to DeMint's previous statements on Fox News Sunday in which he described himself as "a recovering earmarker" and said he decided in 2006 "to go cold turkey" on earmarking because he believed it was "destroying our country."
"We can't spend all our time trying to rob the federal treasury to get money for our states and congressional districts and still be serious about the big issues like reforming our tax code and fixing Social Security and Medicare," he said on the program. "We've got to focus on the interests of the nation, not on our parochial interest."
Graham was out of the country Monday and unavailable for comment on earmarks. But he has said he draws the line on an earmarks ban when the state's economy is at stake, such as with the Charleston harbor project.
That issue was diffused with a change in the funding process, toward a "merit-based approach," without using earmarks.
But earlier, Graham had argued that earmarks would be acceptable in such a case.
"I respect the spirit in which this moratorium (on earmarks) has been agreed to and hope it will lead to a better use of taxpayer dollars," Graham wrote at the time. "However, I maintain the right to seek funding to protect our national security or where the jobs and economy of South Carolina are at risk."
The earmark issue could hurt Santorum as he tries to build on the momentum of his virtual tie with national front-runner Mitt Romney in Iowa, but it's not likely to be a deciding factor for many voters, Clemson University political scientist Bruce Ransom said.
Santorum's position on social issues is likely to be a larger determining factor for voters who don't like Romney, Ransom said.
"I don't think it's necessarily going to be one-issue race," he said, adding that, "one man's earmark is another man's economic development project."
"It really comes down to how he handles it," Ransom said. "But it is something in terms of fiscal conservatives that raises eyebrows."
Santorum's rise renews earmark debate (USA Today)
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