Republican motto: To seem rather than to be

Via email from CQ Rollcall

More and more independent budget hawks are starting to deride the [Republican] measure’s $2.7 billion in savings from abandoned earmarks as theoretical, at best, and illusory, at worst. Here’s why: The money was appropriated in fiscal 2010 and hasn’t been actually spent yet — and so by law remained available into this budget year. But, under longstanding practice, it would never get spent unless Congress re-upped its support for those earmarks in fiscal 2011. And since Democrats and Republicans had already put themselves on a pork-free diet for the year, the measure before the House calls for “cutting” spending that most likely would never have occurred.

Typical Republican bullshit.