Sarah Palin, Queen of Earmarks

From The American Prospect:

Sen. McCain has made a major cause out of fighting earmarks. He famously opposed the spending of $1 million (0.00003 percent of the federal budget) to pay for a Woodstock museum. But McCain's staunch opposition to earmarks makes his selection of Gov. Palin as his running mate somewhat of a surprise.

According to a Washington Post article, Gov. Palin was somewhat of an earmark queen as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla, Alaska. The article reports that she hired a lobbyist who managed to secure $27 million in federal funds for Wasilla (the cost of 27 Woodstock museums) in her four years as mayor. Her list of pet projects included $450,000 in federal dollars for an agricultural processing center, $500,000 for a community transit center, and $1 million for an emergency communications center -- all of which McCain listed over the years in his annual "pork lists."

With a population of 6,700 this comes to more than $4,000 per person, or $1,000 per person for each of the four years that she was mayor. Now that is real money. If every mayor in America were as successful as Gov. Palin in securing earmarks, the tab would come to $300 billion a year, or 10 percent of the budget. Now that would be something to get upset about.