On Wednesday, House Democrats announced they were declaring a unilateral ban on earmarks for for-profit organizations:

House Democratic leaders banned Wednesday the practice of doling out multimillion-dollar, no-bid contracts to private contractors, a move that will shake up the lobbying industry that has come to rely on securing these so-called earmarks for their corporate clients.

At a meeting of the Democratic caucus, leaders unveiled the new rule that forbids private contractors from receiving earmarks, part of the party’s effort to reclaim the reform mantle that it used successfully in its 2006 midterm campaign to reclaim the majority.

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., whose panel issues thousands of these line-item grants each year, estimated that the fiscal 2010 budget included more than 1,000 earmarks to private companies, through which businesses reaped billions of dollars. Most of those earmarks were culled from the Pentagon’s annual budget.

Republicans weren’t going to just sit there, and let Democrats snatch the reform mantle away from them. Not when they are the true party of reform. They struck back swiftly and surely the very same day:

House Democratic leaders on Wednesday banned budget earmarks to private industry, ending a practice that has steered billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to companies and set off corruption scandals.

The ban is the most forceful step yet in a three-year effort in Congress to curb abuses in the use of earmarks, which allow individual lawmakers to award financing for pet projects to groups and businesses, many of them campaign donors.

But House Republicans, in a quick round of political one-upmanship, tried to outmaneuver Democrats by calling for a ban on earmarks across the board, not just to for-profit companies. Republicans, who expect an intra-party vote on the issue Thursday, called earmarks “a symbol of a broken Washington.”

How’s that for oneupmanship? The funny thing, though, was that the Republican leaders who had spontaneously erupted in that anti-earmark fervor had blood on their hands. Enough blood to bring to mind Lady Macbeth’s wonderful turn of phrase about turning the multitudinous seas incarnadine.

On March 10, 2010, ten Republican congressional leaders released a joint statement announcing their intention to ban earmarks because they have “become a symbol of a broken Washington.” Yet despite their new found disdain for the earmarking process, those same ten Republican leaders have requested over $240 million in earmarks since 2008.

And then an even funnier thing transpired. Turns out there was also some imperfectly disclosed fine print attached to the Republican resolution. Fine print that has the effect of turning the Republicans’ lovely sounding across-the-board ban on all earmarks into the equivalent of a diet till dinnertime.

The AP gave it the kind of headline the Republicans wanted to see: “House GOP adopts earmark moratorium“. But that’s when professional scruples kicked in. They burst the bubble in the lede itself:

In an election-year appeal to voters frustrated with Washington, House Republicans promised Thursday not to stuff any of this year’s spending bills with pet projects for their districts.

And the article later amplifies:

House Republicans promised a one-year pause in earmarks instead of a permanent ban. Boehner said Thursday that suspending earmarks shows Republicans are serious about fixing Washington.

Boehner’s chief qualification for the job is his ability to say, with a perfectly straight face, things that even his own mother wouldn’t credit.

And even that “one-year” ban is only for the rest of 2010. For all practical purposes, what the GOP is saying is: “Only till the midterms, baby! Only till the midterms!”