McCaskill Called Out Colleague Seeking Stimulus Pork

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said that she had to call out another unnamed Democratic colleague who approached her about carving out $1 billion in pork-barrell projects for each lawmaker involved in negotiating the stimulus package.

“At one point in these negotiations, one Democratic member came to me and said, ‘Hey, since we’re the ones putting this deal together, each of us are going to each carve out a billion dollars for things we want,'” McCaskill said during an appearance on the KCMO Morning Show with Chris Stigall on a Missouri radio affiliate.

“I said, ‘You guys are ridiculous. You should not be doing that. That is not the way this is supposed to work,'” McCaskill added.

McCaskill appeared on the show to defend the stimulus, arguing President Obama has done more to encourage bipartisanship than any of his predecessors.

“This is a president who has done more work on bipartisanship in the first three weeks of his president than most presidents have in four or eight years,” she said. “When we did our negotiations, we opened the door to any Republican who could come in the room and work on a compromise.”

The interview took a personal tone when Stigall pressed McCaskill about whether or not her husband, a developer whose firm sometimes competitively bids for government building contracts, would be a financial beneficiary of the package.

“It felt mean and personal, but hopefully I wasn’t defensive,” McCaskill tweeted after the interview. “I enjoy discussions with folks who disagree with me.”

Listen to the entire interview on KCMO here.