Santorum Plays Defense on Earmarks

By MICHAEL WARREN

During Wednesday night’s debate in Arizona, Rick Santorum had a chance to answer a recent barrage of criticisms from Mitt Romney on Santorum's record on earmarks. While Santorum may have won the analytical arguments, his opponents may have won the dramatic exchanges.

Moderator John King challenged Santorum to defend his past support for earmarks, an issue Romney has raised often in the past few weeks. Santorum mentioned that many earmarks in the past have been “good,” including the one that led to the development of V-22 Osprey military aircraft. Santorum continued:

Congress has a role to play when it comes to appropriating money, and sometimes the president and the administration doesn't get it right. What happened was an abuse of the process. 

When that abuse occurred, I stepped forward, as Jim DeMint did, who, by the way, was an earmarker, as almost everybody else in Congress was. Why? Because Congress has a role of allocating resources when they think the administration has it wrong.
I defended that at the time. I'm proud I defended it at the time, because I think they did make mistakes. I do believe there was abuse, and I said we should stop it, and as president I would oppose earmarks.

Read more: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/santorum-plays-defense-earmarks_631781.html