In the course of political campaigns, there are a lot of whoppers – and one of the biggest whoppers in the Utah Senate race came yesterday from former Utah State Senator Dan Liljenquist. Liljenquist wrongly claimed during a campaign event that Sen. Orrin Hatch is the “third biggest earmarker in all of Congress,” and his campaign repeated that falsehood in a press release.
The voters of Utah deserve the truth, which is this: without Sen. Hatch’s leadership, Congress never would have been able to pass the earmark ban in 2010.
The fact is, in 2010, at a time when very few in the Senate wanted to ban pork-barrel earmarks, Sen. Hatch stood on the side of the American people. Sen. Hatch was one of the leaders in the fight to implement the historic moratorium on earmarks, and for that Ending Spending was proud to name Sen. Hatch a taxpayer “Hero.” As an example of his courageous leadership, Sen. Hatch actually took the extra step and withdrew his previous earmark requests, and thus was only one of a few Senators to have had no earmark requests in the proposed spending bills that year. More importantly, the Senator has voted to pass a permanent ban on earmarks, including as recently as February of this year.
As an independent group that tracks earmark requests, we can unequivocally say that while the Senator sponsored earmarks in the past, he was absolutely not the third biggest earmarker in Congress by a long-shot. Don’t just take our word for it: that claim has also been debunked by outside fact-checking groups, such as FactCheck.org.
Mr. Liljenquist appears to be talking out of both sides of his mouth. According to the same article – which I hope is incorrect – Liljenquist said he “supports Congressional directed spending.” Perhaps someone should point out to Mr. Liljenquist that “Congressionally directed spending” is just a fancy way of saying that he actually supports “earmarks.”
Finally, Sen. Hatch’s principled and consistent push for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution demonstrates that he is a part of the solution in the fight against the out-of-control spending spree in Washington.
