Many self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives in Congress defend pork-barrel spending by arguing that the practice circumvents the wasteful Washington bureaucracy and allows folks who best know the local community (i.e. congressmen) to steer money where it is most needed.

For instance, in a misguided appeal to federalism Representative Mike Simpson and Senator Larry Craig, both conservative Republicans from Idaho, assert, “We have always believed that better decisions are made by local officials. Who would you rather have making decisions about funding for Idaho? Lawmakers who are accountable to you, or some nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., who has never stepped foot in Idaho?”

It’s a clever attempt by Simpson and Craig to redefine the term “local officials” and frame the earmarking issue in their favor. But an article in the Raleigh News & Observer tells a different story:

North Carolina’s members of Congress quietly took control of more than $135 million from the state Department of Transportation last year to help pay for dozens of highway projects they favored.

That means other projects deemed more important by state and local officials must be delayed.

The new projects dictated by Congress didn’t have enough support in North Carolina to be included among the 2,337 funded in the state’s 2006-2012 Transportation Improvement Program.

And the problem is worsening:

Within broad guidelines set by Congress, the states have traditionally decided how to spend their share of federal gasoline tax receipts. But that is changing.

The growth of earmarks in the transportation reauthorization bill, which Congress considers about every six years, has been remarkable. It raises questions about who knows best how to spend federal highway money: members of Congress, or state and local officials and the highway planners who assist them.

If Simpson, Craig and their colleagues in Congress truly believe in federalism, they sure have a funny way of showing it.

A big tip of the hat to John Tierney for his column today. It’s hidden behind a TimesSelect wall, but here’s a selection:

These federal intrusions are especially scorned by independent voters in the Western states where Republicans have been losing ground, like Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Montana. Western Democrats have been siphoning off libertarian voters by moderating their liberal views on issues like gun control, but Republicans have been driving libertarians away with their wars on vice and their jeremiads against gay marriage (and their attempt to regulate that from Washington, too).

Libertarian voters tend to get ignored by political strategists because they’re not easy to categorize or organize. They don’t congregate in churches or union halls; they don’t unite to push political agendas. Many don’t even call themselves libertarians, although they qualify because of their social liberalism and economic conservatism: they want the government out of their bedrooms as well as their wallets.

They distrust moral busybodies of both parties, and they may well be the most important bloc of swing voters this election, as David Boaz and David Kirby conclude in a new study for the Cato Institute. Analyzing a variety of voter surveys, they estimate that libertarians make up about 15 percent of voters — a bloc roughly comparable in size to liberals and to conservative Christians, and far bigger than blocs like Nascar dads or soccer moms.

Find the study here.

With Eliot Spitzer running almost 50 points ahead in New York’s gubernatorial “race,” it seems safe to crown him the winner.  Most of us know Spitzer for his anti-corporate crusading as the state’s swashbuckling attorney general.  A lot of ink has been spilled predicting how he will govern, but little attention has been paid to the consequences for education.  Although he may be bad for business, Spitzer is, surprisingly, pro-school choice.

The New York Daily News reports that Spitzer, “speaking to Orthodox Jews at a Brooklyn yeshiva, said it is unjust that private schools educate 15% of the state’s students but get only 1% of the education budget.”  He supports encouraging private means of educating the public, and appears increasingly unabashed in discussing the topic.

Earlier in the year, he flipped from hazy opposition to support of what was then an education tax credit proposal.  “I support the idea of education tax credits,” claimed Spitzer, the same month he declared that “vouchers would destroy the public school system.”

The education tax credit at issue was re-formed as a blanket child tax credit, but Spitzer still supports the concept of education-specific tax credits.  His spokesman said that “if elected, Eliot will explore the feasibility of expanding such programs.”

Spitzer’s still no fan of vouchers, but education tax credits are emerging as both the “third way” choice policy for Democrats and the preferable policy for social and libertarian conservatives (Spitzer stole the issue from his current opponent, Faso, who sponsored the ETC bill as minority leader of the state Assembly in 2001).

Hopefully the school choice coalition at TEACH NYS are gearing up to ask for the moon next year, when they have a popular Democratic ally in office.  School choice supporters should think big in this political environment and put the opposition on the defensive – start with a broad-based bill that covers all parents and make them whittle it down in negotiations.