“I don’t think so,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told the National Journal in response to whether she would comply with the resolution. She argued the moratorium was simply “about messaging” and would give a false impression about taking serious action on reducing the deficit. Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) expressed similar reservations yesterday.

And Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for her part, attempted to backpedal on her definition of exactly what an earmark is, telling the Minneapolis Star Tribune that transportation projects should be excluded. “I don’t believe that building roads and bridges and interchanges should be considered an earmark,” Bachmann said. “There’s a big difference between funding a tea pot museum and a bridge over a vital waterway.”

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Mark Udall (Colo.) have teamed up with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) to press for a vote on the Senate floor on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), however, remains a staunch proponent of earmarking and he has said he’ll block any efforts to have a floor vote on the issue should it be brought up today. He argued the Senate simply doesn’t have enough time to consider the measure right now, but would be open to a vote at another time.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) begrudgingly agreed Monday to a Republican moratorium on earmark requests. (Louie Palu/ZUMA Press)

In the lead-up to Tuesday’s vote by Senate Republicans to self-impose a two-year moratorium on earmark requests, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) released a statement indicating his avowed, albeit somewhat conflicted, support for the idea.

“I respect the spirit in which this moratorium has been agreed to and hope it will lead to a better use of taxpayer dollars,” Graham said. “However, I maintain the right to seek funding to protect our national security or where the jobs and economy of South Carolina are at risk. If the Obama Administration and their bureaucrats in the federal agencies take action against the best interests of South Carolina, I will take swift action to correct their wrongs.”

[Congress1] The heart of Graham’s worries is the Port of Charleston, which must be deepened to stay competitive with other ports along the Eastern seaboard, but it could just as easily stand for the pet project of any senator who now must worry about ways to ensure, and take credit for, worthy initiatives in his or her state. With the successful passage of Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) earmark moratorium among Senate Republicans — and a likely floor vote today on the question of whether to do away with earmarks in the next Senate altogether — Senate Republicans (and some Democrats who have signed on as well) are now facing tough choices about how to keep spending in check to better serve the national interest while still satisfying their constituents’ short-term needs.

Many of the Republican senators who ultimately signed onto DeMint’s proposal, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — a longtime proponent of earmarks — hardly did so wholeheartedly.

“Make no mistake. I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state,” said McConnell during his announcement Monday that he would vote for the moratorium. “I don’t apologize for them.”

Indeed, for a speech renouncing earmarks, McConnell’s remarks struck some observers as odd for devoting long portions to the “truly vital projects” he has supported over the years in Kentucky. But to Steve Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that seeks to eliminate wasteful subsidies, earmarks and corporate handouts, such difficulties in adapting to a new earmark-less world seem unlikely to begin and end with McConnell.

“There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, I’m sure,” Ellis said. “And certainly there are growing pains and adjustments that come with it.”

Many senators, who are currently quite comfortable with obtaining funding for their state through simple earmark requests, will now have to devise new ways to successfully advocate for and obtain funds for their states. There are positive and negative channels, experts say, through which this might occur.

“One is under the cloak of darkness or underground attempts at getting the agencies to do what you want them to do,” Ellis said. “The other is to work with the executive branch to develop the metrics and systems and create merit-based or competitive formulas for allocating spending.”

When House Republicans enacted an earmark ban this March, for instance, all but four members obeyed the new rule — but many found ways around it.

“There are other ways to indicate one’s preferences without technically earmarking,” said Daniel Schumann, policy counsel at the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for greater transparency in government. “Members can talk to the federal agencies, write them a letter, and ask them to consider certain companies or folks to do certain things. It’s not technically an earmark but it functions in a similar way.”

And when the rules applied only to House members, many simply made subtle requests of their senators.

“There are rules against members of the House lobbying members of the Senate, but as a practical matter there are ways to communicate what your preferences are for earmarks,” Schumann said. “One way to do it is to put in a request even if it’s not granted, because those requests are public. This of course becomes a lot harder if there’s a moratorium in both chambers.”

Another possibility, however, is that the moratorium will help foster a system in which legislators are forced to focus on drawing up more detailed authorizing legislation in the various committees designed to oversee the federal agencies. “One of the benefits of a moratorium is it concentrates the mind,” Ellis said.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who announced yesterday that he was joining Senate Republicans in a self-imposed moratorium on requesting earmarks, remains optimistic about the change.

“I’m hoping to lead by example and show my colleagues that there is life after earmarks,” he told reporters on a conference call devoted to explaining his decision to forgo the practice from now on. Udall was soon subjected to tough questions, however, about how he planned to guarantee grants for research initiatives at Colorado State University that had previously enjoyed his blessing though the earmark process.

“You’re right that I do support what CSU is doing, and there are many steps that can be taken,” Udall said. “I’m going to work with the administration so that when they’re drafting their budgets they’ll include funding for the state’s highways, bridges and roads and I’ll redouble my efforts during the federal grants process to advocate for districts and municipalities in the state. I have a senior staffer who works solely on that process. Ninety-nine percent of the state’s federal funding comes through federal grants and block grants, and I can write a grant bill if any needs go unmet.”

Graham, too, spent the majority of his announcement assuring South Carolinians that he would find alternative ways to address the infrastructure needs of the Port of Charleston, arguing that he still has two options.

“1. Pass Senator DeMint’s proposed legislation reforming the way port studies and harbor deepening are funded,” he said. “Or 2. Press the Obama Administration to include the necessary funding for the port study in their budget submission to Congress.”

If neither of those works, however, Graham made clear he was reserving the right to “use every option at my disposal to ensure funding is made available.”

Giving up earmarks might be painful at times, argues Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, but it’s necessary if Congress is going to start governing in the national, and not parochial, interest.

“We’re a long way down a road that we shouldn’t be down, in which Congress gives huge authority to the executive branch to decide where money should be spent,” said Harper. “We need bills saying any community with these particular needs should get funding, not my community should get this project.”

The project of ending earmarks, in other words, is tied into a much broader project to increase congressional oversight over federal spending and rein it in in the process.

“[Arguing in favor of earmarks] is just saying we don’t want to do the oversight,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said on a conference call on Monday. “Bureaucracies can’t do the spending unless we allow it. We ought to be overseeing every penny the government spends everywhere.”

It’s an ambitious plan, and it just might sink a number of local projects that senators like Graham are still counting on finding a way to get done in their home states.

“Earmarks are the easy, lazy way of doing this stuff,” said Ellis. “Maybe the Charleston project is great, but is it the best? Every port along the East Coast wants to deepen and is undergoing this race to the bottom. Charleston is looking over its shoulder at Savannah, which is looking at Baltimore and Philadelphia. The question isn’t whether it’s in Charleston’s interest, but whether it’s in the national interest. Maybe, but maybe not.”

Although the Republican Conference voted to adopt the moratorium, it’s important to remember that — currently, at least — it’s a nonbinding resolution.

“I’m going to look out for my state of Oklahoma,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Poltico today, in apparent defiance of the upcoming decision. “Obviously, that’s what the Constitution says I’m going to do, and I’m going to do it. Let’s keep in mind this is over. I’ll be the last conservative standing.”

Whether Inhofe’s small act of civil disobedience — or Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C) hedging — prevents Republicans from claiming the moral high ground on the issue remains to be seen.

As the cross tabs indicate, it’s not just conservatives who say Congress should do away with the practice of earmarking. Let Freedom Ring’s president Colin Hanna said he has shared the survey results with several Senate offices, but he declined to indicate which ones.

“It’s about trust but verify,” Dallas Woodhouse, the North Carolina state director of AFP, told TWI sister site The American Independent when asked whether or not Congress would achieve anything during the lame-duck session. He added that AFP wanted Congress to pass a “clean, continuing” resolution to fund the government until the new Congress could make decisions, and to extend the Bush tax cuts.

On whether to pass unemployment insurance that expires at the end of the month, he said if the measure passed with the tax cuts, it would not be a “major issue,” but had problems with its continual extension. “Is unemployment insurance, insurance? Or is it welfare?” he asked.

Others in Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group founded in 2004 by billionaire David Koch but closely associated with the Tea Party, were convinced that Congress might pass bigger legislation. “Now Congress must respect the will of the people and refrain from passing any new legislation that supports or funds the Left’s global warming agenda, the bailout for union pensions, or funding for the Obama/Pelosi health care takeover,” said AFP President Tim Phillips in a press release preceding today’s rally.

“How egregious it would be to increase taxes,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), chair of the Tea Party Caucus and the headline speaker for the protest. “In the 6th District of Minnesota, they could take out $1.2 billion out of my district to spend more … they spend more than that before their morning coffee!” Ostensibly commenting on the expiration of the Bush tax cuts slated for the end of the year, she said, “The largest tax increase in history could cost 2,000 jobs in my district.”

Bachmann could hardly leave the rally as so many fans mobbed her. “Join my Facebook page!” she said, trying to leave.

Several other members of Congress stepped out of their nearby offices to speak. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and several newly elected congressmen staying at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel for new member orientation also spoke.

“The repeal of welfare reform was in Obamacare,” claimed Gohmert.

The event drew fewer than 300 people, even though AFP provided buses from North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. “We needed to send a message to be a watchdog,” said Fay Kist, a retired teacher who traveled by bus from Virginia Beach. When asked about her specific concerns for the lame-duck session, her response, over AFP-provided Domino’s Pizza, was immediate: “Earmarks, I never liked earmarks.”

After the rally, AFP steered many attendees to the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has opposed a moratorium on earmarks proposed by congressional conservatives. But just after 2 p.m., at the start of the lame-duck session, he changed his position in his opening speech on the Senate floor.

“This is no small thing. Old habits are not easy to break, but sometimes they must be,” he said. “There is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and out of control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight.”

Luke Johnson reports for The American Independent.

I have thought about these things long and hard over the past few weeks. I’ve talked with my members. I’ve listened to them. Above all, I have listened to my constituents.  And what I’ve concluded is that on the issue of congressional earmarks, as the leader of my party in the Senate, I have to lead first by example. Nearly every day that the Senate’s been in session for the past two years, I have come down to this spot and said that Democrats are ignoring the wishes of the American people. When it comes to earmarks, I won’t be guilty of the same thing.

Make no mistake. I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state. I don’t apologize for them. But there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight. And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government.

That’s why today I am announcing that I will join the Republican Leadership in the House in support of a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th Congress.

The vote on earmarks tomorrow is a pretty small, symbolic issue, compared to other fissures that will doubtless arise between the GOP establishment and Tea Party-backed candidates. The question is whether this is a relatively small bone McConnell figured he could throw the Tea Party, or whether it’s a sign of a whole lot more capitulating to the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party to come.

That’s not yet a majority, but it’s about double the number who have come out against the measure, so nearly all the senators now sitting on the fence would have to vote ‘no’ for DeMint’s moratorium to fail. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) emailed me the following statement on Friday:

The message from the 2010 election was unmistakable: Washington spends too much and borrows too much.  I want to take every possible step to reduce spending, decrease the debt and limit the size of the federal government.   Since joining the Senate in 2007, I have voted consistently for earmark reform.  Banning earmarks will not on its own put our fiscal house in order.  It will however send a strong message that we need to do something different and I plan to continue to vote for it.

And the momentum isn’t coming just from Republicans. Following President Obama’s call for Congress to reform the earmark process, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) released the following statement:

“Earmark reform has been a lonely fight for a long time, so it’s encouraging to have others taking this issue seriously, especially among Democrats since I will be the only senator from my party opposing earmarks after the new year,” McCaskill said.  “The bottom line is that tax dollars shouldn’t be doled out based on politics or secret deals, and it’s time both Democrats and Republicans join together to stop them.”

Earmark reform, and perhaps other open government and congressional ethics rules, might be a rare place of ideological overlap between President Obama and the Tea Party agenda. Teaming up on something like more aggressive lobbying reform or shoring up the Office of Congressional Ethics — which some Republicans have indicated they would like to see scrapped — would require a real setting aside of partisanship, however, and I haven’t seen anything so far to indicate that it’s in the works.