Time to stop sending the State’s money to the Feds for redistribution.
“I guess Mississippi doesn’t want Federal money anymore,” revolving-door K Streeter John Feehery posted on Twitter last week. Republican primary voters had just declined to renominate Sen. Thad Cochran, the Republican pork king, and instead forced him into a runoff that he’s likely to lose.
“I betcha there are 49 states that will gladly take it.”
The tweet was perfect. In less than 140 characters Feehery had not only summarized Cochran’s reason for existence, he also helped reveal what the GOP’s K Street wing has at stake in its primary battles against Tea Partiers like Mississippi’s Chris McDaniel.
Cochran is the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee and currently the ranking member on the Defense Subcommittee. If Republicans retake the Senate this year, Cochran would chair the full committee.
Back before Republicans banned earmarks, Cochran was also the top porker of the U.S. Senate. In 2009, Taxpayers for Common Sense reported that Cochran led the league in both earmarks requested (103 requests worth $775 million) and earmarks secured (48 earmarks worth $216 million).
According to Citizens Against Government Waste, Cochran was the top requester in 2008, 2009, and 2010 – you can think of this as the period between the indictment of former top GOP appropriator Ted Stevens and the Tea Party-inspired GOP ban on earmarks after the 2010 election. In his three-year reign of pork, Cochran requested a billion in earmarks, according to CAGW.
In Feehery’s vision, this is just a story of a Mississippi lawmaker bringing home “federal money” to his neighbors. But Feehery’s interest in the pork king shows us another dimension of earmarking and the federal spending bonanza.
It’s not only Main Street Biloxi that benefits from the pork-barrell spending that Cochran champions. K Street is the other big winner.