Republicans Packed Defense Spending Bill With Earmarks, Says Sen. Claire McCaskill

First Posted: 05/26/11
By Colin Clark
Editor, AOL Defense

WASHINGTON -- One of the Senate's top campaigners for good government is charging House Republicans with quietly loading their new defense policy bill with earmarks that are currently banned by the GOP's own rules.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has pledged to keep all earmarks out of the Republican version of the Defense Authorization Act. In a letter to Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the new chairman of the House committee, and its top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the Missouri senator claims the proposed bill "has obviously been structured to circumvent the earmark ban adopted by the House of Representatives." And McCaskill writes that if she can't keep those earmarks out of the bill, she'll make each one public.

But the McKeon is having none of McCaskill's scorn.

"Her letter is more politics than substance," HASC spokesman Josh Holly wrote in an email to AOL Defense.

(More here.)