No Vote, No Pork

Here's a little Washington tradition that I don't really understand:

Earlier this year, McConnell asked for $4 million for marijuana eradication efforts by the Kentucky National Guard; $1 million for construction of the Kentucky Blood Center Building; and $650,000 for Advanced Genetic Technologies, a DNA research center at the University of Kentucky.

When reporters asked about his earmark requests Tuesday, McConnell said he was "actively working to defeat" the massive omnibus bill since the Senate never had a chance to take up individual appropriations bills.

"I think there are many Senate members who have provisions in it for their states who are also actively working to defeat it. This bill should not go forward," he said. "And regardless of whether members had some input in the bill much earlier in the year when the bills could have been moved to the floor bill by bill by bill, it is completely and totally inappropriate to wrap all of this up into a 2,000-page bill and try to pass it the week before Christmas."

Why don't Democratic leaders take this stuff out of the bill? Surely the point of legislative pork, if there is a point, is to build support for your legislation. If $650,000 for some friend of Mitch McConnell's who works at the University of Kentucky is the price of his support for a giant appropriations bill, then that's a reasonable price to pay. But if McConnell thinks that, all things considered, it's a bad piece of legislation that he won't support then there's no point. No vote, no pork. It's absurd for Senators to request and receive earmarks, then turn around and complain that they're voting against the resulting legislation because it spends to much.