McCain has made earmarks and pork barrel spending a central part of his campaign.

In her introductory appearance with McCain in Dayton, Palin was presented as a tough-minded Washington outsider who strove to fight pork barrel earmarks. In her first speech as the presumptive vice-presidential nominee in Dayton, Palin touted her experience as a reformer: "Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor, I’ve stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the Big Oil companies and the “good old boy” network.

In his introduction, McCain claimed Palin “championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending.” And in this interview on The View, McCain claims that Palin never sought earmarks as governor:

Likewise, Palin claimed in an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson that she has been telling all Alaskans for years that she has been saying “no more” earmarks:

In addition, Republican supporters have been quick to describe Palin’s reputation as someone who stood up to the old-boy Washington Republicans. At the Republican National Convention, former presidential hopeful Fred Thomson said in a speech “Well, give me a tough Alaskan Governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the Union — and won — over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.”

In campaign speeches, McCain has said of Palin: “I can’t wait to introduce her to Washington, D.C., and the pork-barrelers and the lobbyists and all the special interests whose day is done, my friends.”

The problem is, Palin already knows the pork-barrelers and lobbyists well, and has been in the top ranks of them herself. She has long been a close ally of Sen. Ted Stevens, arguably the biggest pork barreler in history (and certainly of the last 8 years according to taxpayer watchdog groups), and herself has been perhaps the biggest pork barreler per capita in the country during her time as mayor and governor.

McCain has been saying in campaign speeches he will publish the names of people who seek earmarks. In a campaign stop with Palin he said: “The first earmark pork-barrel bill that comes across my desk I will veto it. You will know their names, we will make them famous and we will stop this corruption.”

It turns out McCain has already been publishing Palin’s pork barreling. McCain took her tiny town of Wasilla to task 3 times during her 6 years in office there for earmarks she won from Congress.

Los Angeles Times:

For much of his long career in Washington, John McCain has been throwing darts at the special spending system known as earmarking, through which powerful members of Congress can deliver federal cash for pet projects back home with little or no public scrutiny. He’s even gone so far as to publish “pork lists” detailing these financial favors.

Three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of “objectionable” spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time — Sarah Palin.

In 2001, McCain’s list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town — one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion.

McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin’s tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002. The funding was provided to help direct locally grown produce to schools, prisons and other government institutions, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

The items were part of nearly $27 million in earmarks Palin won for Wasilla, a town of less than 6,000.

On the trail, in attacking earmarks McCain frequently blasts an earmark of $3 million used to find out how many grizzlies Montana has and whether they need continued protection as an endangered species. He said: “We’re not going to spend $3 million of your tax dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana. I don’t know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but …”

If McCain is elected, he will have to veto requests from Palin for very similar earmarks in 2009:

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Yet Alaska has been the largest beneficiary of the earmark system through the years and its most senior legislators, including Stevens and Rep. Don Young, also a Republican, were among its most ardent defenders.

The money that the state of Alaska requested for 2009 includes $25 million for “Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery” and $3.2 million for seal and sea lion biological research, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Palin has long had a close relationship with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, widely considered to be at the heart of the old-boy Alaska network connected to Washington. Currently under investigation for corruption charges, Stevens:

• is the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate.
• helped bring 1,452 projects worth $3.4 billion between 1995 and 2008 to Alaska from Washington, including $220 million for the Gravina Island Bridge to Nowhere and $176,000 in 2001 for the Reindeer Herders Association.
• helped Alaska become ranked number one in “pork per capita” from 2000-2008.
• is frequently criticized by Citizens Against Government Waste winning the The Hogzilla Award and The Whole Hog Award.
• placed a secret hold on a Congressional bill, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, that would allow easier accountability and research of all federal funding measures. The bill was part of what later forced Alaska and Palin to reign in earmark requests. But it was blocked in secret by Palin’s long-time close ally in pork barrel spending.

In articles about Palin, Stevens is often mentioned as one of the corrupt Republican establishment figures she’s taken on. The record shows a different tale.

Before running for governor, one of Palin’s earliest moves on the way to statewide prominence was as a part of an embattled 527 group that sought to raise money for and promote Stevens. Washington Post reported, Palin’s name appears in the 2003 incorporation papers for “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public, Inc.” as one of the three founding directors. Unregulated by the Federal Election Comission, the group was free to bypass donation limits set by Congress and raise an unlimited amount of money for Senator Steven’s reelection campaigns. Palin served as a director in the group until 2005.

After that, Stevens supported Palin in her successful 2006 campaign for governer. He endorsed Palin and the two made a campaign commercial together:

Palin, in September 2007, briefly called on Stevens to explain why the FBI was investigating the remodel of his home in Girdwood and his ties to former VECO Corp. CEO Bill Allen, who had pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska state legislators.

Stevens was charged in July 2008 on seven counts of corruption. He has been accused of concealing several lucrative gifts from executives from the oil company Vesco. He denied the allegations and soon after appearing with Gov. Palin at a joint news conference where she said Stevens “needs to be heard across America.”

After Stevens’ indictment McCain claimed that Stevens’ appropriation practices “bred corruption.” You can hear McCain’s comments here:

She said that perceptions about her divide with Stevens were incorrect: “I have great respect for the Senator. He needs to be heard across America. His voice, his experience, his passion needs to be heard across America so that Alaska can contribute more. … I have great respect for him and I agree there’s a big difference between reality and perception regarding our relationship.”

Stevens said: “We’ve known each other for a long time and worked together for a long time. I’ve never known of any animosity between the two of us at all.”

Steven’s then joked they were the “Sarah-Ted show.”

View the video here:

Palin first became cozy with Stevens as mayor of the city of Wasilla. Though Wasilla had fewer than 6,000 residents, she took the initiative to hire a lobbying firm in 2000 headed by Sen. Stevens’ former chief of staff, Steven Silver, to lobby the senator in Washington.

Silver’s chief role was to arrange meetings between Stevens and Palin, who regularly flew to Washington to seek funds.

The New York Times:

As the new mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, in 2000, Ms. Palin initiated a tradition of making annual trips to Washington to ask for more earmarks from the state’s Congressional delegation, mainly Representative Don Young and Senator Ted Stevens, both Republicans.

According to USA Today, public records show Palin paid Silvers about $36,000 per year. In 2001, Palin was quoted in a local newspaper giving Silver credit for helping secure federal funding for Wasilla.

The LA Times reported:

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin made regular trips to Washington seeking federal aid. The city received $26.9 million in earmarks during her tenure from fiscal year 2000 to 2003, according to the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks pork barrel spending. That meant Wasilla, with under 6,000 residents at the time, got roughly as much money as the city of Boise, Idaho with 200,000 residents.

That comes out to $4,415 per resident from 2000 to 2003, or more than $1,103 per year per resident. For the math on this, take the $26.9 million in earmarks from 2000-2003, divide by 4 years, then divide by 6,092, the average population in Wasilla during that time.

According to Citizens Against Government Waste, a national watchdog group, other states in the country got just $34 worth of local projects per person in 2008 on average.

So Wasilla, under Palin’s initiative, averaged more than 32 times the current national average in pork barrel spending. If the numbers are adjusted for inflation, it’s higher. She left office in 2002 because of term limits.

Under her direction, Wasilla also bested Stevens in per capita pork spending from 2000 to 2003. Stevens and Alaska have been ranked number one in average per capita pork spending by state since the figures started being tracked in 2000, but Palin exceeded even their levels.

USA Today reported:

Congressional spending items for Wasilla during Palin’s term included $1 million for a regional dispatch center and $1.5 million for water and sewer improvements, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.

…

It is not unusual for municipalities to hire lobbyists and seek federal help. But of 149 incorporated places in Alaska, just six of them had paid registered lobbyists in 2002, including Wasilla, lobbying records show.

Palin, contrary to her image, was at the cutting edge of promoting lobbying and pushing for earmarks, working closely with the master of the process and paying his former chief of staff.

“It was about being face-to-face with those who were actually writing the budget,” Palin told The Anchorage Daily News in 2006, referring to the Congressional budget in Washington.

Under increasing pressure from President Bush and reformers in Congress, including both McCain and Obama, Alaska under Palin made improvements to its earmark program to evaluate requests, and told the legislature she would need to cut back earmark requests.

In March 2008, Palin’s Special Counsel and Director of State-Federal Relations John Katz wrote an article in the Juneau Empire defending earmarks. He said that despite recognizing increased scrutiny of pet projects, Palin was not “not abandoning earmarks altogether” and would request $200 million for 31 projects in the next year.

“[E]armarks are not bad in themselves. In fact, they represent a legitimate exercise of Congress’ constitutional power to amend the budget proposed by the president,” he wrote.

The LA Times reported:

The money that the state of Alaska requested for 2009 includes $25 million for “Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery” and $3.2 million for seal and sea lion biological research, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner wrote:

The state, along with dozens of local governments and nonprofit groups across Alaska, routinely asks Congress to fund everything from new buildings to docks and road work. The Alaska Railroad alone asked for about $80 million this year, while Nome wanted $13 million for wind generation, North Pole asked for nearly $7 million and the Fairbanks North Star Borough asked for about $25 million.

The Associated Press reported:

“Under her leadership the state this year asked for almost $300 per person in requests for pet projects from one of McCain’s top adversaries: indicted Sen. Ted Stevens.

That’s more than any other state received, per person, from Congress for the current budget year, and runs counter to the reformer image that Palin and the McCain campaign are pushing. Other states got just $34 worth of local projects per person this year, on average, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based watchdog group."

Palin reduced her requests to Stevens for special projects slightly this year to 31 earmarks totaling $198 million, about $295 person. But her current requests are still roughly nine times the national average for pork barrel money, and “would still put Alaska No. 1,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“They’ve definitely become addicted to earmarks, and Gov. Palin has continued in at least some form that addiction,” he said.

The Associated Press reported that John McCain said that Palin as governor:

“Vetoed a half a billion dollars in earmark projects — far, far in excess of her predecessor…”

But what Palin vetoed weren’t actually earmarks, as CBS News reported:

The facts are Sarah Palin did veto half a billion dollars, but in state spending – not earmarks.

The vetoes were of normal state legislative spending requests over two fiscal years. Earmarks refer to Congressional spending inserted into bills under the radar usually used for special projects in the congressperson’s district or state. After interviewing Palin’s gubernatorial spokesperson, Bill McAllister, Talking Points Memo explained:

Generic spending requests, which Palin rejected through the use of her line-item veto power as governor, aren’t remotely the same thing as earmarks. As McAllister told us: “It’s called line-items, generally. [Earmarks], that’s not common parlance.” And the money that Palin cut didn’t come from the federal government, which is the starting point for the whole earmarks debate. So that $500 million figure has nothing to do with earmarks.

Statements by her have affirmed Congressional earmarks as “incredibly important to us.”

The Los Angeles Times:

This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. “The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship,” she wrote in a newspaper column.

Statements by her frequently have affirmed earmarks. In a candidate’s questionnaire for the Anchorage Daily News, October 2006, she said the state should rack up as much earmark funding as possible while its Washington insider connections were strong:

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now—while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

Palin’s Director of State-Federal Relations, John Katz wrote in the Juneau Empire that Congress, the Federal Highway Administration and members of the Alaska Congressional delegation instituted the reforms and Palin responded to the ‘unwanted attention" by making changes accordingly:

Recognizing there have been instances of earmark abuse, Congress has instituted reforms to bring greater transparency and accountability to the process. These include the identification of each earmark’s sponsor and a prohibition against earmarks inserted into the budget without public discussion.

Recently, members of the Alaska congressional delegation announced they would post on their Web sites the earmark requests it receives. Gov. Sarah Palin has applauded this decision.

…

In addition, the department will have further discussions with local governments that are interested in particular earmarks. This discussion is precipitated not only by the earmark reforms in Congress but by requirements imposed on all states by the Federal Highway Administration.

In a later press conference with Stevens, Palin stated the state’s changes in seeking earmarks was based on “dealing with” the “writing on the wall,” that both Obama and McCain planned earmark reform and that it was going to happen regardless of what Alaska did:

“But back to the federal earmark issue. My comments have been in the context of recognizing changes are coming. Both presidential candidates have both confirmed that they will work towards earmark reform. So just recognizing that – seeing the writing on the wall and just dealing with it is where I’m at.”

From the press conference:

The election Sept. 8 turned into what Jerry Seinfeld would call the Bizarro World, a place where things are the opposite of what they are in the real world.

The Associated Press reported:

“Just the other day our opponent brought up earmarks — and frankly I was surprised that he would even raise the subject at all,” Palin said. “I thought he wouldn’t want to go there.”

Obama hasn’t asked for any earmarks this year. Last year, he asked for $311 million worth, about $25 for every Illinois resident. Alaska asked this year for earmarks totaling $198 million, about $295 for every Alaska citizen.

In fact, the numbers are even worse than the above, which is comparing Palin’s 2008 with Obama’s 2007. Here are the direct comparisons. All the numbers for 2008 and 2007 below are from the Associated Press article, except for Palin’s 2007 number which comes from her own advisor. We divided by 676,987, the 2007 population of Alaska, to get the 2007 per person number:

2008:

Earmarks sought by Palin: $198 million, $295 per person

Earmarks sought by Obama: $0, $0 per person

2007:

Earmarks sought by Palin: $550 million, $819 per person

Earmarks sought by Obama: $311 million, $25 per person.

Palin sought 32 times the amount Obama sought. In other words, Obama sought less than 1/32nd the amount of earmarks Palin sought.

All years:

If you stack Palin’s two years in office against Obama’s four years, the numbers come out similar.

Palin 2007-2008: $748 million, $552 a year per person (average her 2007 and 2008 amounts and divide by Alaska’s population of 676,987 in 2007)

Obama 2005-2008: $860 million, $18.2 a year per person (using Illinois’ population of 12,852,548 in 2007)

Palin asked for $33 times more than Obama; Obama asked for 1/33rd of what Palin sought.

Whole states:

If you count the whole states of Alaska and Illinois in 2008, Alaska still is by far the worst in the U.S.

From Citizens Against Government Waste:

Alaska 2008: $379 million in pork. $555 per person. Ranked #1. Well more than double the #2 contender – Hawaii at $220 per person.

Illinois 2008: $327 million in pork. $25 per person. Ranked #36. This is 4.5% the per capita amount of Alaska. Alaska gets 22 times more per person.

National average 2008: $33.77 per person. Alaskans under Palin are receiving 16.4 times more than the average American.

Time as mayor:

If you compare Palin’s record as mayor with Obama’s, the numbers are even worse.

Palin’s average pork won per person a year in the years 2000-2003 : $1,104.

For the math on this, take the $26.9 million in earmarks Palin won for Wasilla from 2000-2003 after hiring a lobbyist, divide by 4 years, then divide by 6,092, the average population in Wasilla during that time.

That’s 60 times Obama’s pork per person average sought as senator from 2005-2008. In other words, Obama sought 1/60th the pork Palin sought. Counting inflation, it would be worse. If you take the amount of earmarks they received (i.e. not sought), it would also be higher. Wasilla received $26.9 million. The 2005-2008 figure for Obama is what he sought, but he received far less. For example, of the earmarks he sought in 2007, he received $98.6 million.

So a person who is arguably the worst in the country on earmarks attacked a person who asked for between 1/30th and 1/60th the amount she sought.