Peter Roskam loves to harrangue Democrats about earmarks.

Last year Peter Roskam joined Reagan 21 , a caucus of extreme conservative Republican Senators and Representatives of the likes of Tom Coburn and Jim Demint. Among its other objectives Reagan 21 committed itself to ending all earmarks.

Needless to say, I was surprised when Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2008 Pig Book, a compendium of earmarks, and it revealed 10 earmarks attributed to Roskam at a cost of $12 million. Not a huge number but quite a bit for someone committed to ending all earmarks. I wonder if he’ll have to turn in his Reagan 21 membership card.

The projects involved seem pretty laudable, a big chunk of the $12 million going to PACE and METRA which I support. It just makes Roskam seem a bit silly.

Coburn and Demint honored their no earmarks pledges. I didn’t check on all the other Reagan 21 members.

The Reagan 21 web site looks a bit forlorn as of this writing. I signed up for their mailing list but haven’t heard from them. The site does present an interesting statistic:

“In 1996, there was 3,023 earmarks at a cost of $19.5 billion. The number of earmarks skyrocketed to 15,877 in 2005 at a cost of $47.4 billion.”

But wait a minute. Which party controlled Congress during those years? Kind of makes Reagan 21 look a little silly too.