It was a little like throwing a juicy steak into a pit of hungry lions. Republicans could hardly contain their glee Thursday at the prospect of skewering Democrats on the Senate floor over a $1 million earmark for a museum in upstate New York commemorating the 1969 Woodstock concert.
The earmark was requested by New York’s two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer and presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said the money would help build a performing arts center that could boost the area’s depressed economy.
“I’m proud of this earmark, it’s the right type of earmark,” Schumer said on the Senate floor during a debate over a Republican amendment to remove the money from a health and human services spending bill.
But Republicans declared the project an example of fiscal irresponsibility by the Democrats, who during their last campaign promised to eliminate government waste.
The GOP tried to seize the high road, calling for the money to be redirected to a fund for states to improve the health care of pregnant women and children.
“If anything was needed to highlight the waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars proposed by this Congress, the Woodstock museum earmark certainly fits the bill,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. “With all the pressing needs facing our country today, from entitlement reform to children’s health care to the war in Iraq, the idea that the federal government should fund a museum that celebrates a 38-year-old concert is simply absurd.”
Clinton was away campaigning and did not take to the floor to defend the earmark, but Schumer argued vigorously for its inclusion, insisting it should not be categorized as wasteful spending.
Schumer labeled the spending provision a “good earmark” because it would provide jobs and economic relief to Sullivan County, N.Y., an area of the Catskill Mountains that long agolost its cachet as a tourist destination.
“Since the 1930s, there has been a view that the federal government has every right or reason to help those states and localities” like Sullivan County, Schumer said.
Schumer was unable to persuade the Senate to table an amendment to kill his earmark, and the Senate redirected the $1 million to the health-care fund for women and children.
