McClatchy reports:
Even though President Barack Obama has repeatedly pledged to ban congressional earmarks, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has 16 such projects, worth about $8.5 million, in the bill the Senate is scheduled to begin debating Tuesday.
The earmarks include funds for a Chicago planetarium and a Chicago suburb. Obama has been relentless in criticizing the use of earmarks; in his address to a joint session of Congress last week, he boasted how the economic stimulus package was "free of earmarks."
It's good to see the hardly downtrodden wealthy suburbs of Chicago cleaning up:
Among the projects with Emanuel's name attached are $900,000 for equipment at Chicago's Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum; $95,000 for "educational expenses" at the Kohl Children's Museum in Glenview, Ill.; and $950,000 for "street rehabilitation" in the village of Franklin Park, Ill.
Imagine that.
