In last night's State of the Union Address, President Obama covered a lot of topics. There will be plenty of analysis and parsing of everything he said over the next few days/weeks on this site, and I've already noticed a bunch of people getting upset over a simple throwaway line in the SOTU speech:
And because the American people deserve to know that special interests aren't larding up legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this: If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. I will veto it.
OMG he's gonna veto any bill with earmarks!!!!! PANIC!!!!
Not so much.
You see, elections have consequences. Sometimes the consequences are good, and sometimes you end up with John Boehner as the Speaker of the House. Both Boehner and Mitch McConnell decided in late November that grandstanding about earmarks was better than actually talking about our deficit. To this end, they decided that their party would not vote for any bill that contained earmarks:
Moments after McConnell (R-Ky.) reversed course Monday and said he’d back a moratorium on these special projects in the Senate, Boehner (R-Ohio) released a statement saying that the Senate and House GOP are "united in support of an earmark ban."
"An earmark moratorium shows that elected officials are serious about restoring trust between the American people and those who are elected to represent them," Boehner said in a statement released by his office. "This is a strong first step – though only a first step – towards making the tough choices required to get our country back on track. We hope President Obama and Washington Democrats will show they are serious, and join us in this effort to restore the public trust."
We know that earmarks aren't the big, scary, deficit-ballooning monsters that Republicans have made them out to be. We know that they make up a laughably small percentage of our Federal spending. We know that earmarks are often a great way to get valuable projects funded in areas that would otherwise have problems attracting attention. We know these things, and so does everyone else in that chamber (with the possible exception of John McCain).
It doesn't matter. This is the "grand gesture" they're making to address the deficit. Boehner has decided that earmarks will no longer be allowed in bills in the House. He'll see to it that no Republican will vote for any bill with an earmark, and since no earmarked bill will ever pass the house, no earmarked bill will make its way to the President's desk.
McConnell and Boehner had hoped to spend the next two years crowing about their earmark fiscal responsibility to anyone who would listen, and Obama's announcement puts a bit of a damper on that plan. Obama has often spoken of the good that can come from earmarks, and the very small amount that earmarks actually cost us. Many seem to wish that he would have done so last night and launched into an impassioned defense of earmarks. Yesterday was not the time for that. Obama took one of the Republican's "big ideas" and made it much less meaningful by uttering a single throwaway line:
If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. I will veto it.
He stole some of John Boehner's thunder, and Boehner knew it. His reaction to Obama's earmark line was annoyance - a few lazy claps and a face that looked like he stepped in something.
There are things about Obama's SOTU speech that are worthy of concern, but this isn't one of them.