How bad was Rick Santorum’s record on pork? I look at that in my homepage piece today:
There’s no way to know for sure how many earmarks Santorum requested, since lawmakers weren’t required to attach their names to earmark requests until 2007. (Santorum served in the Senate from 1995 to 2007.) The Club for Growth, in its presidential white-paper series, claims that Santorum “requested billions of dollars for pork projects,” while the Perry campaign is alleging that Santorum requested over $1 billion in earmarks. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, views the $1 billion–plus figure as a plausible estimate. “As a matter of fact, I would probably peg it probably a little higher,” he says.