Whenever Congress gets together and assembles a "deal," be sure to check the fine print to see who really gets the goodies.
In the case of the latest deal to resolve the current budget crisis, that fine print included funding for a dam, in of all places KY and guess who is the senior senator from KY and Senate Minority Leader.....yup Mitch McConnell.
Details below the swirling orange currents of dam and conservative GOP politics.
It's called the Olmstead Lock and Dam and part of it is in KY:
As a lengthy battle over reopening the federal government and extending the debt ceiling came to an end Wednesday night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's Republican enemies seized on a provision included in the final deal they said was a betrayal of conservative causes.
The deal contained a $2.8 billion authorization for the Olmstead lock and dam project in Western Kentucky that at first glance appeared to many as McConnell sneaking pork into the last-minute bill.
Mitch immediately responded saying he didn't do it. Lamar Alexander of TN said he was the one who got it included
but since Mitch is the GOP Minority leader of the Senate, he would seem to be one who has final say on just what gets added to the budget deal and he clearly had no opposition to it even if he didn't make the move himself.
Right wing groups are furious at this pork and clearly agree that McConnell isn't going to get away with trying to claim he had nothing to do with it:
Still, at least two conservative groups, Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Senate Conservatives Fund, put the blame on McConnell.
The Senate Conservatives Fund called the provision a "Kentucky kickback."
"Mitch McConnell is trying to blame others for this abuse, but everyone knows he negotiated this deal, and everyone knows he wrote the bill," said Matt Hoskins, the group's executive director. "If he didn't want the earmark included, he could have kept it out."
There is another event today which could well come back to haunt Mitch....it was words of praise for McTurtle from his good buddy Harry Reid and as one commentator noted on MSNBC this morning, "You can be sure those statements are going to come back to haunt Mitch in any KY primary battle." Conservatives loathe Reid and any words of praise from him for McConnell are like battery acid when they look at McConnell and see only a guy who sold out the party's purity for some dam lock in his home state.
Have fun Mitch....gonna be a fun journey from here to election day.