Has Castle Lost the News Journal?

Yesterday the News Journal published an editorial criticizing Mike Castle for earmark hypocrisy. Castle’s earmark moratorium is a subject that interests the News Journal quite a bit because they produced at least two articles (here and a longer one here) and one blog post. It’s clearly an issue that concerns them.

That time has changed. The national uproar forced Congress to reform its methods. Today’s earmark process is open; projects are screened and must pass muster.

The Republicans claim that refraining from such requests will save taxpayers money. Delaware’s Rep. Mike Castle, running for U.S. Senate, agrees with the ban. He has a history of delivering earmarks to Delaware. Despite this he says, “We’re just not in a financial situation in this country where we can continue to spend.”

This is true. We should cut the spending. But declining to request an earmark doesn’t take the money out of the budget. An earmark today focuses the money on specific targets — housing grants come from the housing budget. A federal budget without earmarks would be no smaller than one with them.

Banning earmarks is a stunt.

I guess Mike Castle’s blatant hypocrisy was so obvious that even the News Journal couldn’t continue to ignore it. Plus, the NJ is right – an earmark ban is a stunt. Earmarks make up less than 1% of the total budget. Stopping them will do nothing for the budget deficit. It’s just another way for Republicans to pretend to care about deficits, which only lasts until another Republican becomes president.