Senator Barack Obama on Thursday released a list of $740 million in earmarked spending requests that he had made over the last three years, and his campaign challenged Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to do the same.
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Obama Lists His Earmarks, Asking Clinton for Hers
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JO BECKER
Senator Barack Obama on Thursday released a list of $740 million in earmarked spending requests that he had made over the last three years, and his campaign challenged Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to do the same.
The list included $1 million for a hospital where Mr. Obama’s wife works, money for several projects linked to campaign donors and support for more than 200 towns, civic institutions and universities in Illinois.
But as the Senate debated a bill to restrict the controversial method of paying for home-state projects — a measure defeated Thursday evening — Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign also said that only about $220 million worth of his requests had been approved by Congress. And among those that had been killed were his request in 2006 for $1 million for an expansion of the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, is a vice president.
Mr. Obama’s aides and officials at the hospital said Mr. Obama’s wife had had nothing to do with the request. Campaign officials said he had voluntarily released the list of his earmark requests to underscore his promise to bring greater openness and transparency to government, an issue on which he has tried to put Mrs. Clinton on the defensive.
The release comes as both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, have joined the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, in supporting a proposal to ban spending earmarked for home-state projects for one year.
So far, Mrs. Clinton, a senator from New York, has resisted Mr. Obama’s call to release her earmark requests, and the skirmishing over the issue set off more tension between the campaigns.
“Bringing real change requires changing the way we do business in Washington,” said Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s communications director. “If Senator Clinton will not agree to join Senator Obama in releasing her earmark requests, voters should ask why she doesn’t believe they have the right to know how she wants to spend their tax dollars.”
Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, countered in a statement that she had supported a one-year moratorium on earmarks to “give the Congress time to take a hard look at this process and work on improving its transparency and accountability.”
He did not address whether she would release a list of her requests. But Mr. Reines said she was “proud of the investments in New York that she has secured,” and that he would limit her earmark requests this year “to the most critical needs for New York and America,” like providing health care for people suffering from the effects of Sept. 11 and bolstering domestic security.
Mr. Obama had previously released the requests for earmarks that he made last year. And Thursday’s statement disclosed details of his requests from 2005 and 2006 for the kinds of home-state projects that critics often describe as pork-barrel politics.
Many senators have been reluctant to release such lists out of fear that they would open them to questions about ties to political donors or controversy back home about which organizations they had favored. As a result, it also is hard to judge how often they succeed in pushing the requests.
Based on the release by his campaign, Mr. Obama was able to obtain only about $3 out of every $10 he requested.
The winning requests included more than $10 million for a military arsenal in Rock Island, Ill., to several million dollars for research on soybean disease and livestock genes at the University of Illinois and $100,000 for after-school clubs and sports programs at the Chicago Jesuit Academy.
The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a pavilion that could increase its capacity for treating patients by one-third.
Kelly M. Sullivan, the medical center’s vice president for communications and marketing, noted that Mr. Obama had also requested money for a number of other hospitals in Illinois, and she said any lobbying for the money had been handled by the hospital’s government-affairs officials.
“I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Ms. Sullivan said. She said the hospital’s lobbyists often seek help on their own from both of the state’s senators.
In other cases, Mr. Obama’s requests benefited political supporters.
His campaign’s list said the senator had secured $1.3 million of an $8 million request in 2006 for a high-explosive technology program for the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The list said the program was overseen by General Dynamics.
One of Mr. Obama’s top supporters, James S. Crown, serves on the board of General Dynamics, a military contractor. Mr. Crown is a member of Mr. Obama’s national finance committee.
Mr. Obama also secured $750,000 of a $3 million request for renovation of a space center named for Mr. Crown’s grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
In addition to the University of Illinois, Mr. Obama secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Emil Jones Jr., the president of the Illinois State Senate and an early and powerful political benefactor of Mr. Obama’s, has been a dogged champion of Chicago State, and one of Senator Obama’s closest friends. A Chicago businessman, James Reynolds, sits on its board.
But Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said these requests had all been considered worthwhile by the senator’s staff, and that Mr. Obama never discussed any of them with Mr. Crown, Mr. Jones or Mr. Reynolds.
And even though earmarks have been a tried-and-true way for politicians to win allies, it did not work that way for Senator Obama in at least one case.
In 2006, Mr. Obama sought, but did not secure, $900,000 for a “Go Girl Go” sports initiative aimed at discouraging socially risky behavior in teenage girls by encouraging them to pursue physical activities. The group was founded by the former tennis star Billie Jean King. But Ms. King has endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president.
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