Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett voted against the $787 billion economic stimulus package in February, declaring the day it passed that “the only thing this bill will stimulate is the national debt.”
Two days earlier, however, Bennett had written to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department seeking stimulus money for Utah, according to copies of the letters released under the Freedom of Information Act. Using 16 identical cover letters, Bennett passed along stimulus funding requests from 14 Utah cities and counties totaling $182.5 million.
….USA Today’s review of congressional correspondence with 10 federal departments or agencies found 13 Republicans who voted against the bill and sought funding for their states or districts.
This is presented as sort of a vague act of hypocrisy, but that’s unfair. If money is being doled out (or about to be doled out) despite your opposition, that doesn’t mean your state shouldn’t get its share. Likewise, even if I oppose, say, the mortgage interest deduction, there’s nothing wrong with me continuing to take advantage of it as long as it’s still around. There are ways in which stuff like this might rise to the level of mockable hypocrisy, but this really isn’t one of them.
