The exploding Mr. Creosote

The Constitution authorizes the U.S. Congress to exercise its limited powers — including the disposition of federal tax dollars — to promote “the general welfare.”

It doesn’t say “someone’s welfare.” The word is “general” — everyone’s welfare.

Building an aircraft carrier may be seen to promote everyone’s welfare because it can be used to defend the entire nation from attack, and to keep the sea lanes clear of pirates, allowing all to benefit from free trade.

On the other hand, a requirement that some aircraft carrier component be built in a given congressman’s district — regardless of whether that’s the most cost-efficient place to build it — does not promote “the general welfare.”

And that’s before we even get to the western Massachusetts endive research center, or a federal “Energy Department” allocation so UNLV can have a migratory bird-counting machine.

Earmarks — allocations slipped into bills at the request of individual congressmen or senators in a manner that bypasses normal hearings and fiscal review — are not intended to promote the “general” welfare. They are allocations selfishly directed at the district of a given member of Congress, or to a wealthy campaign contributor, as a quid pro quo for political or financial support.

The reason such proposals don’t go down to defeat in the Senate on a 99-1 vote, every time, is that they all do it. Each senator votes to authorize the wasteful porkfat funded with embezzled tax loot in the states of his 99 colleagues, and in exchange they vote for his, or hers.

But now it’s an election year, and members of Congress, their hands still stained black and green from diverting millions of dollars in tax receipts to their home districts, suddenly wish to be seen as “reformers.”

So Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — senators who last year managed to steer $100 million and $342 million worth of earmarks, respectively, to their home states — have now experienced a revelation on the road to Pennsylvania Avenue, and announced they will join with their Republican opponent, John McCain, and a small band of GOP senators who have long been calling for a halt to the practice.

Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., is among only six members of the Senate who don’t seek the home-state freebies. Meaning — let’s be clear — that plenty of Republicans have been in the slime up to their withers, as well. He will return from the campaign trail to Washington this week to vote for the one-year moratorium on earmarks, and has also vowed to veto any budget bill that comes to him as president if it still contains the set-asides.

“The jig’s up on earmarks,” says South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, the first-term McCain ally in the fight against the porkfat.

In the past, senior Republicans such as former Appropriations Committee member Thad Cochran of Mississippi have teamed with Democrats to block such reform, typically by margins of 2-to-1.

Will the GOP now allow such appetites to seal their doom, like the exploding Mr. Creosote in “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life”?

Republicans are in trouble with the electorate, as the loss of the longtime suburban Chicago seat of retired Rep. Dennis Hastert to a Democrat in this week’s special election reveals. If the party sticks with business as usual, allowing hypocritical charlatans such as Sens. Obama and Clinton to seize the label of “earmark reformers” for themselves, they are likely to meet the political fate they deserve come November.

“This should be a no-brainer for Republicans,” warns former GOP Rep. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. “It shows you how dysfunctional some of these folks are that this is not a complete lay-up. If they let this fail, and then Nancy Pelosi gets out and gets to the right of the Republicans on earmarks, then they can just forget about being the majority party for well into the future.”

The GOP does at least have one valuable ally in its quest to expose and limit this corruption, while spotlighting its longtime Democratic practitioners: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued a statement Monday reiterating his support for the right of congressmen and senators to divert money back to their home districts for roads and other projects.

But will Sen. Reid’s willingness to raise the black flag, don the eye patch and perch the parrot on his shoulder prove to be enough?

Stay tuned.