Earmarks And Oil: Areas Where Palin And McCain Disagree

Compromise is key to getting anything done in Washington, which leaves the question of whether John McCain and Sarah Palin can compromise with each other on their areas of disagreement, specifically, drilling in ANWR and earmarks.

Recently it was reported that Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin, who some refer to as the drill drill drill Governor, had stated in an interview with Larry Ludlow, "Sen. McCain is wrong on that issue. . . . We’re talking about a sliver of the coastal plain of Alaska being explored and drilled for oil. It’s about a footprint of a 2,000-acre plot of land. That’s smaller than the footprint of LAX.” Palin was referring to John McCain's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Northern Alaska also known as ANWR. Palin was "pleased" that McCain had come around on the Outer Continental Shelf, but she intended at the time of the interview, which was before she was chosen to be McCain's vice presidential running mate, to "talk him into ANWR." Ludlow thought at that time that with Palin's experience as the chair of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission and then as Governor of Alaska, there was a chance that McCain would hear Palin out and listen carefully. Another area of contention is earmarks, to which John McCain has been a critic of for his whole career. Earmarks are congressional provisions that direct approved funds to be spent on specific projects, generally sponsored by people from the individual state to which the earmark would go to. Sarah Palin has requested earmarks in her career as Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska. John McCain, always critical of earmarks in general, was just as critical of Palin's requested earmarks and on three different occasions has listed her requested earmarks in his catalog of objectionable "pork lists." In a newspaper column, Sarah Palin has defended the use of earmarks by stating "The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship, " as reported by the LA Times. McCain in contrast has described earmarks as "Earmarking deprives federal agencies of scarce resources, at the whim of individual members of Congress."

In 2001, McCain's list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town -- one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion.

McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin's tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002. The funding was provided to help direct locally grown produce to schools, prisons and other government institutions, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Wasilla received $11.9 million in earmarks from 2000 to 2003. The results of this spending are very apparent today. (The town also benefited from $15 million in federal funds to promote regional rail transportation.)

Other examples are listed, such as the funds for the "bridge to nowhere", where Palin backed funding for the bridge before she became Governor, then killed the project when it was discovered the state had more important priorities, but this is enough to see that as the oil issue is one where there is a disagreement between how John McCain thinks and how Sarah Palin thinks, so is the issue of earmarks. They have criticized each other in those two areas, yet are running mates now for the 2008 presidential elections, which begs the question of compromise. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Palin has fought corruption within her state and within in her party, and won, but this does not negate the fact that there are areas of disagreement between McCain and Palin. In a political arena where nothing gets done without compromise in Washington, will John McCain and Sarah Palin be able to lead by example by compromising with each other in order to put the people of America first?