Spare the Pork, but Dish Some Candor 

Published: March 15, 2008

Call it coincidence. But with Senator John McCain campaigning as a leading opponent of budgetary pork, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama suddenly endorsed their Republican rival’s election-year call for a moratorium on earmarks. The Senate overwhelmingly rejected the proposal on Thursday, but the candidates’ rare convergence was another demonstration of the power of symbolism over substance in the campaign.

When asked for his position on the complexities of the troubled economy, Mr. McCain simplistically wends his way through tales of pork spending by Congress. As fun as it is to listen, the overall math doesn’t work. The total $15 billion in all lawmakers’ earmarks in the current $2.8 trillion budget is only about enough to pay for two months of the Iraq war.

True, earmarks can range from wasteful to ludicrously greedy — but meritorious, too, in some cases like a new library or that needed bridge to somewhere. More to the point, the candidates should be telling the voters the truth: that Capitol pork has hardly been the main engine of waste over the past seven years, as the Bush administration and mainly Republican-led Congresses have run up trillions in deficit and debt with tax cuts for the rich and Mr. Bush’s disastrous war. Mr. McCain — who opposed the Bush tax cuts seven years ago — voted to extend all of them on Thursday.

Pork is certainly catchy on the stump, particularly when Mr. McCain is one of the few lawmakers to have disdained it. On Thursday, Mr. Obama released a list of the $740 million in earmarks he had requested in the last three years and challenged Mrs. Clinton to release hers.

We’re certainly for transparency — and for less pork. But what the campaign is most in need of right now is more candor from the candidates on the truly tough economic challenges the next president will inherit.

Lee ADDS: Candidates Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama VOTED FOR this Bill ONLY AFTER they were assured it was already LOST!