McHorny's $3.25 mil haul belies his anti-earmark "crusade"

Two earmarks for $3.25 million.

That's what Pat McHorny wrote letters asking for this year while promoting himself as an anti-earmark crusader on the House floor:

"We need to lay clear these earmarks . . . so the American people can judge the worthiness of the programs and the money allocated to them."

And now he's saying he won't ever ask for an earmark, starting next year.

From the Winston Salem Journal:

This year Sen. Patrick McHenry, R-10th, has emerged as one of Congress’ most outspoken critics of earmarks. He also has pledged, starting next year, not to seek earmarks for new projects unless they had been authorized - but not yet paid for - by Congress

Click here to see his April letter for a $2,250,000 grant to a company called Mariner Containers in Granite Falls, NC. They are supposed to be making "Smart Containers" but so far they haven't made anything smarter than a plastic septic tank. I wonder what other companies would have liked to bid for this project? And would they have done the work better or cheaper?

Click here for his request for $1,000,000 to go to a Valdese, NC subsidiary of a French Corporation called Saft, which already had a $31 million contract to provide batteries to the US military. They hardly need a $1 million rebate. And the profit from this essentially no-bid contract goes to some wealthy Frenchmen? I'm sure 10th District constituents can appreciate that irony.

Yeah, Pat, it's obvious you are a true crusader against earmarks.

From the Winston Salem Journal, these are some other North Carolina earmarks:

❑ $1 million for “alternatives to transplantation” research at Wake Forest.

❑ $100,000 for “technology for rural schools.”

❑ $150,000 for electronic medical records at Alleghany Memorial Hospital.

❑ $500,000 for sewage and water infrastructure in Mount Airy.

❑ $376,000 for high-tech equipment for the Winston-Salem Police Department.

❑ $300,000 for biofuel research at Appalachian State University.

[Note that no traditional press has reported either of McHorny's earmarks.]

From The Crypt at polico.com in July when he was asked about a $129,000 Christmas Tree earmark that even fellow Republicans voted against.

"Look, the important thing is transparency and openness," McHenry said when asked about the earmark, which he confirmed that he had inserted into the bill. "I have never been opposed to directed spending."

McHenry added: "I just think that it's critical for members to know what they are voting on when a [spending] bill comes to the floor."

Now, Pat, I have to say you're right. Not knowing what is being voted on is a bad thing.

So we don't know why these two companies you like so much had to avoid the normal Pentagon procurement process. Is there some reason they otherwise wouldn't have gotten these contracts? Are there other American companies who would have done the work for less, or sooner or of a better quality? If not, why the end-around? Why the secrecy? You were right, Pat, that transparency is important. That would seem even more significant in regard to defense contracts where lives could be at stake.

And now the American people are left to wonder what are you hiding about your connection to these companies that inspired you to procure them millions in secret?

Crossposted at BlueNC and Scrutiny Hooligans. h/t Greg Flynn

UPDATE: It was announced as a grant in November on some kind of business community website called SwampFox where I can't access the author's profile . . . but the Sunlight Foundation lists it as an earmark so it did not go through the defense appropriations process like the SwampFox author, Jim Roberts, wants us to believe.

Apparently, the feds have basically funded this entire company from day one. This is from the Hickory Record a few years ago (I think)

After an uncertain year, a start-up business in Caldwell County has gained forward momentum courtesy of the US government.

The Department of Homeland Security's Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded Granite Falls-based Mariner Container Corporation a $100,000 grant for the development of a "smart" container system. The Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant is funding a feasibility study of Mariner's proposal to build high-tech, largely recyclable shipping containers that could be used for military and commercial purposes.

A Phase II grant, if awarded, will provide Mariner with up to $750,000 for the development of a prototype. Phase III is commercial application of the research and development, and in Mariner's case would likely include contracts with the Department of Defense and/or the Department of Homeland Security, said Mariner founder Rick Lampe. If Mariner gets to the third phase, it could also mean hundreds of new manufacturing jobs for the area.

Still no explanation why they can't go through the regular procurement process and why these people get to start a company on federal dollar.

You're hiding something, dear Patty.

Meet the Sunlight Foundation

The Sunlight Foundation is doing all they can to make the public information about our Congressmen available to us in formats we can use.

Check 'em out. http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/
and bookmark 'em or sign up for their ethics blog or press releases.

I found out about 'em as I researched Patrick McHenry and earmarks. They are all over earmark reform (real reform, not Patty's version). They have some cool interactive maps showing where all the earmarks are going (sometimes the congressman of the location receiving the earmark is not the congressman who asked for it. The foundation has an ongoing project (in conjunction with many other great organizations where they list the earmarks and are asking for volunteers to call their congressman and ask if specific earmark requests came from his/her office.

But there's lots of other cool stuff on the site. They have a wonderful page called Insanely Useful Websites, where you can find all that's available on any Congressman or woman.

If you want to know what's really going on, bypass the media and use the Sunlight Foundation to guide you to the facts.

This is sad, but occasionally I feel compelled to mention other points of view

While we've all been enjoying Republican Jeff Flake's (R-AZ) smack-down of our Pat's earmark hypocrisy (for which Mitchell county took an undeserved jab), there is some truth to McHenry's point. Yeah, it's sad.

It's true that Republicans have really made earmarking a fine art of ripping off the public. But McHenry's self-serving insincere point has merit. Of course there should be transparency. And while Representataive Flake managed to point out our Pat's hypocrisy, there were dozens of earmarks (the 11th sure got it's share, more on that later) that didn't draw any attention.

And, more sadly, when Flake questioned congressman Murtha's one million dollar mystery earmark, according to the Hill, which of course only covered McHenry's side of the earmark story only two democrats voted against it:

In fact, several Democrats who regularly voted last year for amendments to strip earmarks out of bills are now voting against similar challenges.

Prior to last year’s election, two Democrats, Cooper and Rep. Melissa Bean (Ill.), voted for all 19 of Flake’s anti-earmark amendments. This year, Cooper has supported all 15 of the amendments; while Bean has supported just one of the amendments, the effort to prevent money from being spent on the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree, a project in Rep. Patrick McHenry’s (R-N.C.) district.

Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) last year supported 14 of 19 of Flake’s challenges. This year, Matheson has supported only the challenge to McHenry’s earmark.

Democratic Reps. Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Barney Frank (Mass.) and Gene Taylor (Miss.) each supported five earmark challenges last year. This year, the same Democrats have supported only the effort against McHenry’s request.
Calls to Bean’s and Matheson’s offices were not returned.

Of course, they voted against earmarks when they were from the bloated Republican budget. Democrats traditionally do a much better budgeting job. Even though I can't say I agree with the lack of transparency, I'm not sure the Democratic earmarks are as ugly as the Republican ones. For example, the 11th district earmarks were for schools and hospitals, not roads to nowhere or in exchange for bribes.

WaPo pimps for Pat

WaPo today printed Novak's inaccurate account of earmark history, promoting Pat as a martyred hero of some imaginary Republican fight for transparency.

The formerly respected media outlet then posted an astonishing vapid interview. Who's paying them to print such crap? Or is their reputation so shot, they don't need a high price to make up for the nonexistent loss of integrity.

The Center for American Progress' Scott Lilly sums up the earmark story this way:

The great conservative spin machine that stretches from the White House Press Room across the various right-wing think tanks to Fox News and dozens of conservative columnists and talk show hosts has amassed an impressive list of accomplishments over the years. But none of the efforts by this vast echo chamber is more impressive than the recent attempt to reshape the Bush White House and their allies in Congress as opponents of the practice of placing earmarks in federal spending legislation.

Here's Bob's insipid lies:

McHenry's $129,000 earmark would have promoted tourism in economically distressed Mitchell County. The new Democratic majority's leadership, which routinely supports earmarks, cracked the whip against this one, apparently in the spirit of political revenge. A conservative firebrand, McHenry had immobilized the House and humiliated the Democrats by leading GOP parliamentary maneuvers to force transparency regarding earmarks, previously hidden by both parties.

But it was nice of the Washington Post's Sleuth to mention us in the second paragraph. Too bad she didn't ask about his stand on credit unions, or the voter fraud indictment of his former staff member/housemate. If they wanted to be so gossipy, why didn't they ask about his preference for young men or allegations of providing alcohol to minors at a political event in Catawba. Here's a sample:

As feisty as he is small (he's 5 feet 3 inches or something; he doesn't measure), McHenry is one of his party's chief attack dogs on the House floor, generally raising hell and employing whatever parliamentary tactic he can to obstruct the Democratic majority's legislation.

The baby of five children and the youngest member of Congress, McHenry was born to be precocious. His high visibility and tenacious scrappiness have earned him plenty of liberal detractors (hence a Web site called Pat Go Bye-Bye Web site and a Washington Monthly cover story comparing him to Tom DeLay and Karl Rove.) But he has also gotten buckets of praise and support from his elder fellow conservatives.

The best moment comes with the questions about his lovelife:

Sleuth: Do you have time for dating? What's it like being a 31-year-old single guy in the House?

McHenry: [Laughter] I try to make time for that. It's just difficult with the schedule and everything else. I'm, uh, just trying to, I'm still trying to find the right girl. And I think in all due time it'll work out.

Sleuth: And is there a certain set of criteria you're looking for?

McHenry: Sure.

Sleuth: What is it?

McHenry: A number of things. [Laughter]

Sleuth: Just give me a little example. Does she have to like NASCAR? I hear you're a big NASCAR fan.

McHenry: Well, look, half the NASCAR teams are in my district. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a constituent. Dale Jarrett. So I don't know, you don't really have a litmus test on that. I think when you meet the right girl, you know. At least that's what all my friends tell me.

I'd like to know where we're supposed to be finding the liberal media bias I keep hearing so much about.

The true history of earmarks

From the Center for American Progress, a chunk of a much larger piece by Scott Lilly:

Congressional Republicans have spent hours and hours on the House floor this year decrying earmarks, but they have spent far more time back in their offices crafting letters to ask for them. Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina led an effort that held up appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for nearly a week to protest earmarking. “I'm very proud of the actions that my conservative friends are taking on this House floor to hold the Democrats accountable for their slush fund, their secret earmarks and their pork-barrel projects,” he boasted. “And I urge the body to move in the conservative direction.”

The following week it was revealed that McHenry had written the Appropriations Committee in April requesting funding for the “Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree Project.” It was one of more than 10,000 requests sent to that committee by members of his party.

The “Spin Machine” has also succeeded in obscuring the fact that significant progress has been made by the new congressional majority in cleaning up the process by which earmarks are awarded. These include new rules adopted at the beginning of this Congress that:

* Prohibited members of Congress from using earmarks to reward or punish other members for their votes on matters before the House.

* Require disclosure of the name and address of any intended recipient, the purpose of the earmark, and whether the member has a financial interest in the organization or entity receiving the earmark or would otherwise benefit personally from the inclusion of the earmark.

* Require that all matters before a conference committee (including earmarks) must be subject to full and open debate and that a final version of a conference report must be voted on by a meeting open to all members of the conference committee, and that no item (including earmarks) may be added to the legislation after the conference committee has adjourned.

In addition, the new Congress took the following actions:

* Completely excluded all earmarks from the nine fiscal year 2007 appropriation bills that were enacted in January 2007

* Agreed to cut the amount of funding provided for earmarks in each of the fiscal year 2008 appropriation bills by 50 percent below the levels contained in the appropriation bills passed by the last Congress.

* Established a policy requiring the publication by the Government Printing Office of all letters requesting earmarks included in an appropriation bill prior to floor consideration of the bill.

An important additional reform attempted by the new Congress could not be implemented in the current fiscal year but is likely to be implemented next year. That reform would restore greater scrutiny of requested earmarks before their inclusion in appropriation bills.

The proposed reform would end the recent practice of Appropriation Subcommittees moving toward a policy of granting members a certain amount of money within each bill that they can use for what ever projects they deem to be appropriate. In many instances there is little vetting or review of these proposed earmarks by anyone other than the member who requested them and his immediate staff.

The Appropriations Committee had to postpone their plan to return to a system in which proposed earmarks are subjected to a review by committee staff as well as by the agency personnel managing the earmarked funds. This reform was postponed because of time constraints created by a delay in the deadline for submitting earmark requests and the need to move the appropriation bills in a timely manner. There will, however, be additional review of the earmarks already included in the bills before they are finally agreed to in conference committee.

The Appropriations Committee plans a much more complete review of all requested earmarks next year before any are included in the 2009 appropriation bills.

Thank you, Bob Novak, kind of

[Photo from TPMMuckraker]

Bob Novak is my hero. What a muckraker! I thank the Lord he's all over Patrick McHenry's earmark hypocrisy. The "kind of" refers to his complete disdain when he writes this week that "no one -- and we mean absolutely no one" reported Patrick McHenry's latest spanking (and this time by his own kind, 249-174):

Meanwhile, events during the last week of June demonstrated that the celebrated transparency in the House is a sham. Amendments to strike transparent earmarks are brought up for a floor vote, they are overwhelmingly defeated and the news media completely ignore the story. Searches of Lexis-Nexis and Google News suggest that no one -- and we mean absolutely no one -- has picked up on the story of Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and the embarrassing fight he lost to keep an earmark in his district.

Now, I know, I know, he was only bringing it up to daintily point out that the Democrats are not doing as good of a job as he obviously wants them to do. (Isn't his idealism cute!) But it was just so adorable of him to use the words "Patrick McHenry" and "embarrassment" in the same sentence that I'll forgive him for being so blogodensious, and so tremendously hypocritical in his criticism on one party's comparatively minor failings in comparison to the party he so blindly (and so profitably) supports.

And if absolutely no one picked up on it, how did he find out about it? Did he read about it here or here or here or here or here or here? Oops, I forgot all those media outlets don't exist. He must have been right there in the gallery of Congress to witness the smackdown.

Oh, P.S., Mr Novak, I scrolled down to your comments on Al Franken. Why does he "claim" to have raised 1.9 million while his Republican opponent "announces" his and the primary candidate "declares?"

Novak notices Pat

Bob Novak searched Google News and Lexis and discovered that no mainstream media wrote a word about Pat's earmark embarrassment. But he clearly thinks if it's not covered by the mainstream media, it's not been "picked up." Maybe he's right. What do you think? here's what he said:

Meanwhile, events during the last week of June demonstrated that the celebrated transparency in the House is a sham. Amendments to strike transparent earmarks are brought up for a floor vote, they are overwhelmingly defeated and the news media completely ignore the story. Searches of Lexis-Nexis and Google News suggest that no one -- and we mean absolutely no one -- has picked up on the story of Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and the embarrassing fight he lost to keep an earmark in his district.

I guess Crooks and Liars, and Government Executive dot com and the Lakeland Florida Ledger and Human Events dot com, and the Hill and yours truly are "no one -- and we mean absolutely no one"!

More earmark fallout for Pat

From Lakeland Florida's Ledger:

Garland: To U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., for winning his first victory in the House by ridding a spending bill of a wasteful pork-barrel project. Flake offered an amendment in late June to remove a $129,000 congressional earmark for an economic development initiative titled, "The Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree."

The earmark was put in the bill by Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and would have been used in Mitchell County, where employment has been drastically reduced by the closing of textile mills and furniture factories. The money would have doubled retail space for a gift shop where former factory workers sell products they've made - such as Christmas tree ornaments, handmade soap and pottery.

Yes, it's a worthwhile program. But does it belong in the federal budget, put there without committee hearings or debate? Flake didn't think so, and proposed the amendment to the 2008 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act. The final vote to remove the earmark passed, 249-174.

Last year, Flake proposed nearly 20 amendments to remove earmarks from bills. All his efforts were unceremoniously defeated.

McHenry losing face among more Republicans

Great analysis of McHenry's falling star in the Republican heavens at a right-wing site Human Events dot com:

The message was clear: Any member who opposes our corrupt system of favors and earmarks becomes persona non grata with the appropriations committee and his pork-barreling colleagues. It is, naturally, out of the question for such an uncooperative member to get his own earmarks. McHenry was humiliated but given a lesson on congressional power.

Here's more:

Earmarks: As the immigration bill in the Senate dominated the headlines, a fierce and nasty personal battle over earmarks had erupted on the House side. The message in the death of one particular earmark was that congressmen love their pork -- fight against our system and you don't get to participate.

1. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), as has become his custom, had proposed a series of amendments striking earmarks from the Interior and Financial Services appropriations bills. Each of these failed miserably, garnering at most around 100 votes. Flake's amendments to eliminate funding for subsidies to Washington's Barracks Row, "business incubators" in various regions, an urban planning center, a conference center and an airport commission, among others, lost by a huge margins.

2. But one anti-earmark amendment succeeded. The member punished for his fight against earmarks was Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a young conservative firebrand in his second term representing a district in Western North Carolina. McHenry had sealed the deal for himself with his fight to make earmarks more transparent, but he headed to the House floor to defend from one of Flake's amendments a $129,000 grant to the Perfect Christmas Tree project in Mitchell County, North Carolina.

3.Flake, stating openly that he expected this earmark-killing amendment to be defeated like all the others, acknowledged the poor economic conditions in Mitchell County, but held firm that need for federal intervention was dubious. "If this project is [already] successful, does it still need taxpayer assistance?" McHenry spoke of First Lady Laura Bush's support for the program, even adding to the record a feel-good USA Today piece about the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree Initiative.

4. Financial Services Chairman Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) was full of irony when he rose in support of McHenry's earmark, chiding him for finally finding an earmark he liked. Serrano said that he realized that McHenry was attempting to help his struggling district. But Serrano's tongue-in-cheek support did little good for McHenry or the other North Carolina congressmen defending the Perfect Christmas Tree. It took McHenry very much by surprise when Flake's amendment passed by a large margin, 249 to 174, with support from more than 140 Democrats who had never previously dreamed of voting against any earmark.

5.The message was clear: Any member who opposes our corrupt system of favors and earmarks becomes persona non grata with the appropriations committee and his pork-barreling colleagues. It is, naturally, out of the question for such an uncooperative member to get his own earmarks. McHenry was humiliated but given a lesson on congressional power.

294 to 174: that's how much Congress hates our Pat

Here's what Government Executive dot com had to say about it all:

Democrats and Republicans teamed up, 249-174 to eliminate $125,000 for the "Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree" project. The money was requested by Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who has rubbed a number of members the wrong way for his caustic criticism of earmarking practices. All other attempts to strip earmarks failed by roughly 3-to-1 margins.

Republicans cut McHenry's earmark!

Quick followup: The Hill has this in more detail. I'm too busy to read it right now. Might be that the cut's never passed. -Editor

Gee. Republicans can get embarrassed by their own hypocrisy. At least Arizona's Representative Flake was peeved enough to cut McHenry's Christmas Tree earmark for WNC's Mitchell county. Check this out from Crypt's blog at politico dot com:

Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona — with the help of plenty of Democrats — just screwed his GOP colleague Patrick McHenry out of earmarked money for a project in the latter's western North Carolina district.

It is the first amendment Flake has ever passed to strip money from the annual spending bills.

"Congressman Flake didn't think he'd bring down his first earmark with friendly fire," remarked his spokesman Matthew Specht.

Flake succeeded by winning over Democrats who usually vote against him. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) explained why he had made an exception in this case.

"It was resentment over his hypocrisy in leading the fight against earmarks and then offering one of lesser value," Frank said. "I think penalizing hypocrisy is a legitimate response in politics."

Many Democrats have a particular dislike for McHenry's biting floor speeches. Flake's amendment gave them an opportunity for revenge.

Looks like our Pat is embarrassing more than himself these days. I wonder how he's going to do in his own primary next year.

Pat's all about transparency, NOT

"We need to lay clear this earmarks. We need to know what they are in the legislation so that the American people can judge for themselves the worthiness of the programs."

Crooks and Liars posted this short video over the weekend:



Yeah, I guess Avery County (among others) would have liked to know that over a hundred grand was up for Christmas tree subsidies, don't you think?

Enjoy these selected comments cut and pasted from the post at Crooks and Liars.

This guy is an absolute opportunistic idiot. A child trying to please his daddy who will say anything to get ahead.

He is a nasty little wingnut.

McHenry & Putnam make my skin crawl because they're both pasty white, flabby, guys who think they're tough as nails! Ewwwwwwwwwww, they make me want to gag myself with a garden rake.

The money would double retail space available for a gift shop selling products - typically made by former factory workers whose plants have been shuttered

Well at least it's not for a bridge going to nowhere.

I really can't stand McHenry. Picture a College Republican thug with a Congressional seat and you've got him in a nutshell. The perfect little conservative storm trooper, all yelp and shit for brains. I still have found memories of his inane blather that the Dems were to blame for the Mark Foley mess. Or when Barney Frank verbally eviscerated him on the House floor (basically rubbing in his face the fact that the Dems control the House and he's nothing but a powerless yakker). He's always good to mock.

$129,000 of government money for a shop selling Christmas ornaments? Golly, I hope he can help fund the bake-sale to keep homeless busy will be a success too.

The money would double retail space available for a gift shop selling products - typically made by former factory workers whose plants have been shuttered

Well at least it's not for a bridge going to nowhere.

I don't like him on a lot of levels, but this doesn't seem awful to me. Here's my sniff test - if a Democrat was proposing this, would we howl? North Carolina a furniture making country, and a lot of that work is leaving the US. The skills used in furniture making could translate well into making ornaments, which (in case you have bought any in the last few years) are getting to be big ticket items. What the hell - why not?

Again, I think he's a wanker, but this isn't one to hold against him.

The guy is a craven hack on all talk shows, lies to his own constituents and votes against their interests. I'm sure he's got a bright future in the GOP.

If he were a Dem and the Publicans raked him over the coals for this, we would correctly see it as a petty partisan attack, and call them mean-spirited to boot, since this bill does in fact help the disadvantaged. We reduce our credibility by picking at nits.

Also, although it is very hypocritical of the Publicans to go after earmarks in the wake of Abramoff and the K Street Project, the stubborn fact remains that non-transparent earmarks ARE bad for democracy, and as Americans we should oppose poor Democratic governance with as much brio as poor Publican governance.

I think the point is that you have a guy in McHanry who will spew the party line about 'the invisible, free hand of markets' when factory jobs in his district are outsourced to China, but that he's still got to get people to vote for him, so he sets them up in a crafts shop (no doubt earning a fraction of what they formerly did) on the government dole. So much for the invisible free hand. And, of course, the fact that the government money is being used to make Christmas tree ornaments plays very well with the religious right.

I am not sticking up for McHenry. But most politicians on both sides of the aisle are hypocritical slimeballs, because political power is inherently corruptive. Whether it's the Publicans or the Dems that are feeding like pigs from the public trough, it's my money they're spending.

As a taxpayer, the issue of non-transparent earmarks is much more important than the hypocrisy of one Publican congressman. $129K is less than the cost of ONE up-armored Humvee!

Santa's little hypocrite

Too, too cute. After all his bitchin' and moanin' about earmarks in the last two weeks, our dear Pat got outed. He wasn't really against earmarks themselves, he says. He just wanted everyone to know what they were voting for. But if he wanted people to know what they were voting for why didn't he mention his personal earmark of $129,000 for a Christmas Tree store in Mitchell County?

Commenters from all over are having a jolly ole time with Santa's little hypocrite:

This is from Brandon English at The Stakeholder:

Congressman Patrick McHenry is sort of like that little dog in your neighbors' yard that yaps at you every time you pass by. He’s notorious for his temper tantrums on the House floor that he thinks scores him political points but really just annoys everybody.

Yesterday, he learned what goes around comes around.

After McHenry whined and whined and whined about earmarks last week, new transparency rules adopted by the Democratic Majority forced McHenry to disclose his own earmarks – including $129,000 in taxpayer money for a Christmas tree.

In the spirit of the season, the DCCC carolers give you:

Congressman Patrick McHenry’s $129,000 Christmas Tree Pork Carol
(Sung to the tune of O Christmas Tree)

O McHenry,
O McHenry,
How steadfast your hypocrisy!

You pitch a fit on the House floor,
But Christmas trees you do adore.

O McHenry,
O McHenry,
How steadfast your hypocrisy!

Myrtle Beach Online:

The money that McHenry got would double retail space available for a gift shop selling products - typically made by former factory workers whose plants have been shuttered - such as Christmas tree ornaments, handmade soaps and pottery.

McHenry is a vocal conservative and burr in the side of Democrats running the House. He's not popular with some Republicans; a senior GOP member of the Appropriations Committee pointed McHenry's earmark out to reporters, calling it "interesting."

The Crypt at Politico dot com:

When asked about the earmark, McHenry doesn't like to use the word pork. The North Carolina Republican prefers the term "directed spending," and he said this request is perfectly defensible, even though Democrats have been quietly chuckling about it since it was unveiled as part of the Financial Services spending bill earlier today.

"Look, the important thing is transparency and openness," McHenry said when asked about the earmark, which he confirmed that he had inserted into the bill. "I have never been opposed to directed spending."

McHenry added: "I just think that it's critical for members to know what they are voting on when a [spending] bill comes to the floor."

So for McHenry, pork is OK, as long as you know what pork you're voting on. Got that? Thanks.

Here's some background from McHenry's own site about the project called "The Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree." I wonder what the Christmas Tree and Nurserymen's Association in neighboring Avery County (also represented by McHenry) thinks about all this.

Pat's whining earmark hypocrisy

He used bureaucratic tactics to screw around with the Homeland Security legislation, but now that Democrats are releasing their list of earmark requests, our classy representative in Congress has flipped a daring 180, refusing to release his own!

Rahm Emanuel and others released a detailed list of their earmark requests, but not our Pat. And as cowardly as always, he had his spokesman Aaron Latham make the typically whiny excuses: “We release information on requests when the Appropriations Committee completes the bill-drafting process and there is something tangible and in print."

He tried for a harder hit here: “The Democrats took it on the chin last week — and this week, they’re trying to play political rope-a-dope. It’s interesting that they want to rehash a fight they’ve already lost."

I think the person who lost a political fight (rope-a-dope or not) was dear old Pat. See Congressman Tim Ryan take him on in this great video I posted over the weekend (below) If you didn't read it then, you really should at least check out the last minute.

You know, our wonderfully contradictory Pat said nothing about earmarks when Republicans were in power, but now that Democrats are in charge, he's all over it. More here from The Hill:

Some of last week’s most outspoken critics of Democrats’ earmark proposal aren’t so open about their own requests. Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) were among the leaders of the effort to criticize Democrats for keeping earmarks secret and refusing to allow the projects to be challenged on the floor.

“Let’s have a way to evaluate those earmarks. Our constituents deserve to know before that vote takes place rather than after that bill comes out of conference committee,” Blackburn said.

But they had already turned down requests from newspaper reporters in their home states for a list of the earmarks they were requesting.

. . .

A McHenry spokesman echoed Blackburn’s claims and said his boss didn’t release his earmark request because of a “long-standing” practice among the North Carolina delegation to “avoid confusion.”

Yeah, right. To avoid "confusion." That's even funnier than the rope-a-dope line.

So, not only did our Pat say nothing about Republican earmarks last year and the year before. He's refusing to discuss his own earmarks right now.

Posted in slightly different form at NC Politico, BlueNC, and Scrutiny Hooligans.