March 28, 2023 01:05 PM UTC

Of Course Lauren Boebert Now Supports Earmarks

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• by: Colorado Pols

It has been said that hypocrisy is not a bug, but a feature of the modern Republican Party. We saw it in 2022, when Republicans promoted candidates across the country (Herschel Walker in Georgia, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, and even Joe O’Dea in Colorado, to name a few) who expressed ideas that were contradictory to their own self-professed beliefs or to other Republican ideals in general.

Nevertheless, there are some examples of hypocrisy that are more egregious than others. Few politicians embody the many problems of the Republican Party more than Congressperson Lauren Boebert (R-ifle), and hypocrisy is one of her greatest, uh, strengths.

After spending years bemoaning the very idea of congressional earmarks as corrupt and wasteful, Boebert is now suddenly embracing the idea of bringing pork back to her district. As Charles Ashby reported last week for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:

Despite long being vehemently opposed to congressional earmarks, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert is accepting requests for them.

Over the past two years, Boebert has called such earmarks “corrupt” and “a waste of taxpayer money,” and something only “swamp creature” career politicians would request.

Regardless, staffers for the Silt Republican have sent emails to local officials saying the congresswoman would accept their requests if they made them by today, but isn’t promising if she will submit anything specifically.

“Because of new changes to the House rules, Congresswoman Boebert will now be accepting Community Project Funding submissions,” Raven Finegan, the West Slope field representative to Boebert, wrote in a March 6 email to the Mesa County commissioners.

This is quite the flip-flop from Boebert, though a staffer was quick to point out that the Congresswoman might still flip back in the other direction:

“Please note, the congresswoman is not committed to submitting any Community Project Funding requests, and if she does they will be limited to known priorities with a significant impact on Colorado’s Third Congressional District,” Finegan added.

Um, okay.

In other words, Boebert was always opposed to earmarks but will now support them until she doesn’t.

Boebert claims that her earmark flip-flop is because of a change in House rules that would require floor votes on specific budget requests, or something, but that doesn’t change the fact that she spent the previous couple of years unambiguously trashing the very idea of an earmark (see HERE, HERE, and HERE for just a few examples).

Boebert’s explanation for her 180-degree shift was not well received by the editorial board of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, which opined a few days later on her hypocrisy in an editorial titled, “Wait, earmarks are OK now?”

We were left scratching our heads this week after learning that U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert has flipped her stance on congressional earmarks. She had been vocally opposed to the practice as recently as a few months ago. So what changed? [Pols emphasis]

According to reporting by The Daily Sentinel’s Charles Ashby, Boebert has come around to the practice of members of Congress submitting funding requests for their districts. This comes after years of our congresswoman calling earmarks “corrupt” and “a waste of taxpayer money,” and something only “swamp creature” career politicians would request.

The stated reason for her change of heart is that the new Republican House majority changed the rules around how it would handle earmarks.

The Sentinel editorial board found Boebert’s explanation for her sudden embrace of earmarks to be rather weak:

We’re confused by this argument. Boebert’s previous position was that these earmarks were part of the problem in Washington that needed to be torn down. Congress didn’t need to just tweak some rules here and there. This was a corrupt practice and it needed to go. [Pols emphasis]

“The American people are tired of the D.C. way. At a time when our projected deficit for 2021 is $2.3 trillion, it is wrong that career politicians want to line their own pockets by using earmarks to pay off campaign donors and special-interest groups. Tax dollars are not politicians’ personal wallets, and they should stop treating them as such,” Boebert stated in 2021 when earmarks were reintroduced by House Democrats…

…Boebert on the other hand has never been wishy-washy on this subject, which is why this turn is so odd. In the previous Congress she went so far as to vote against bills she agreed with because they contained earmarks. These were bills that she later touted as achievements, but her stance on earmarks meant she could not vote for them. [Pols emphasis]

Boebert’s change of heart on earmarks is pretty easy to explain once you get past the sheer hypocrisy of the decision. After winning re-election by a mere 546 votes in a district that she should have won easily, Boebert is clearly feeling the heat to produce SOMETHING for the people of CO-03 beyond an ever-growing pile of idiotic tweets; constant (and often confused) criticism of the Biden administration; and bringing pictures of human fetuses to a hearing on endangered species. She’ll never get any legislation passed in the comically-inept House Republican caucus, so her best shot at producing real, tangible results for the good people of Congressional District Three is to try to bring home some bacon.

Boebert seems to understand that her angertainment brand of politics does not impress the non-MAGA voters in her district, but she doesn’t really WANT to change her habits even if she knew how. In the aftermath of her narrow re-election victory, Boebert pledged to “take the temperature down” on inflammatory partisan politics in Washington DC. She broke that promise within a matter of weeks.

Frankly, Boebert does more to help Democrats (albeit inadvertently) than she does for Republicans. Her constituents can only hope for leftover scraps from their elected representative, and that’s why Boebert is suddenly in favor of an earmark process that she long derided as “pork” and “corruption.” Boebert is hoping that CO-03 voters will forget that she ignored them for the last three years so long as she can get the federal government to write a couple of checks to support local interests ahead of the 2024 election; then she can get back to focusing on what meaningless words she’ll mutter at the next Turning Point USA conference.