An Earmark Windbag Called MARIAH

Sen. John McCain spent a good bit of time on the Senate floor this week battling earmarks that his colleagues want to stuff into the 2010 Defense appropriations bill. One such earmark included this: a Montana project called the Magnetohydrodynamics Accelerator Research Into Advanced Hypersonics wind tunnel, or MARIAH.

Since 2004, Congress has earmarked $70 million for MARIAH and now wants to blow another $9.5 million on the project that McCain said neither the Army nor the Air Force want.

McCain, a former sailor, said critics claim Congress spends like a drunken sailor on liberty. But he said, "I do not use that phrase anymore because I never knew a sailor, either drunk or sober, with the imagination members of Congress have, which is best epitomized in this bill."