Pork is pork is pork. Nothing changes. Washington politicians do everything they can to send taxpayers' money home. Any large bill can provide cover for this age old reality in Congress. This is not a party thing, it's a normal way of political life in Washington. Perhaps it's what people expect. Certainly, Vermont's special interests expect largess for all sorts of projects from their two Senators and lone Representative in D.C.
The Democrats' public statements about transparency are true ("When Democrats took control of Congress, they promised to be more open and accountable, saying they would disclose the purpose of each earmark, the name of the lawmaker requesting it and the name and address of the intended recipient." "But Democrats said they had no list of the projects in the recently passed bill and no explicit criteria or standards for judging which hospitals should be reassigned to an area with higher Medicare payments.").
Their pork barrel politics is plain to see. I guess that's what they mean by transparency. The feeble arguments used by Democrat leaders are laughable:
"Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said people should keep the big picture in mind."
“It’s easy to criticize individual provisions of large, complex bills,” Mr. Elshami said, but “the focus should be on the huge number of uninsured children who will be eligible for life-saving health care under our bill.”
"Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee, acknowledged that “it’s hard to decipher” the cryptic language used in the bill to identify specific hospitals. “It’s always been thus,” Mr. Stark said in an interview. “I am at a loss to explain why.”Granting relief to particular hospitals is sometimes a way for Congress to improve “the equity and fairness” of Medicare payments, Mr. Stark said. Under Medicare, he added, “you are basically setting prices, and the system is clumsy.”"
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