Bobby Jindal's secret love affair with earmarks added up to more than $97 million in FY '08

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Meg White

The morning after listening to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's rebuttal speech, where he railed against a stimulus package "larded with wasteful spending," to the president's state of the nation address, I walked into the office and sent out a Tweet:

"Did anyone else think Gov. Bobby Jindal sounded like a cross between Mr. Rogers and a used car salesman in his rebuttal to Obama's speech?"

The more I learn about this new Republican savior, the more he sounds like a used car salesman.

It was no surprise when Jindal went off on the supposed earmarks in the stimulus package. Many have written about the lies that Jindal repeated about supposed stimulus pork, which ran the gamut all the way from miserly mice to voracious volcanoes. But it turns out he was being disingenuous and hypocritical at the same time.

In fiscal year 2008, his last hurrah as a U.S. congressman representing Louisiana before taking over the governor's mansion, Jindal scored big in the pork contest. He, sometimes in concert with other lawmakers, ended up bringing home $97,913,200 in bacon. That put him at the number 14 spot in Taxpayers for Common Sense's annual tally of the most successful appropriators in the House.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told me that Jindal has every right to change his mind about earmarks now, but "facts are facts."

"He definitely did well... in the House," said Ellis. "Clearly he was not concerned about the earmark process, or not concerned enough to say 'no' at that point."

Ellis also pointed out that Jindal's place on the list is more significant than some others.

"There's only one other lawmaker that's ahead of him that wasn't on the appropriations committee," Ellis said.

That didn't seem to be weighing on Jindal during his prime-time speech.

Jindal's objection over the money going to volcano monitoring sounded like a crafted pop song. He even had a nice hook: "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."

Too bad his factoid wasn't true. ProPublica notes that the $140 billion Jindal was whining about will be spent on "U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities."

But obfuscation wasn't enough for Jindal, so he threw in another batch of hypocrisy.

According to the USGS Web site, "a major goal of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is to reduce the vulnerability of the people and areas most at risk from natural hazards."

So if we take away money for monitoring volcanoes, wouldn't it be fair to cut funding for hurricane watchers as well?

Not that Jindal was silent on hurricanes. No, he wasn't about to let one of the biggest government letdowns in the past decade go unutilized. He railed against the shoddy response to the 2005 disaster to prove that, um... the stimulus won't work?

Furthermore, Jindal shows his true bullying nature when he repeats a lie about the salt marsh harvest mouse. The lie was first uttered by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) when he dubbed it Nancy Pelosi's pet mouse. From there it marched up the ladder of pseudo-credibility from the Washington Times to Fox Business to The New York Times. But it still wasn't true. Come on, Bobby. Put away the tired rhetoric and pick on somebody your own size.

Jindal doesn't seem to mind when pork makes it to his state. Maybe his objection is that the salt marsh harvest mouse and volcanos aren't in Louisiana?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Correction: I originally wrote that Jindal was ranked 14th of all congressmen in FY 2008, but he was 14th in a tally of House members only. I regret the error.