Boehner’s counterpart in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, an appropriator who boasts of the federal dollars he’s delivered for Kentucky, surprised many conservatives when he appointed a group to study the earmarking process. While the group includes some notorious porkers, such as Mississippi’s Thad Cochran, it also includes Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a man who has fought countless battles over wasteful spending and isn’t intimidated by appropriators.

These congressional actions were bolstered by Bush, who followed up his State of the Union talk with an executive order directing federal agencies to ignore any future earmark that is not voted on by Congress.

Theses steps don’t go nearly as far as many taxpayer watchdogs desire. They wanted all congressional Republicans to give up earmarks regardless of what Democrats do. And they were disappointed Bush didn’t cancel the nearly 10,000 pork-barrel projects included in the mammoth omnibus spending bill approved in December. By targeting only future earmarks, the Democrat-led Congress could simply put off action on appropriations bills until a new president is sworn in to office.

But change comes slowly to Washington, and these baby steps are important developments. That’s how Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, father of Porkbusters, sees it.

“[B]ack in 2005 when Porkbusters started, nobody in Washington cared and members of Congress were bragging about pork,” Reynolds wrote. “Now the State of the Union leads of with an attack on earmarks, to thundering applause. Yeah, a lot of it’s a sham. But hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, and this kind of hypocrisy indicates that the anti-earmark momentum is growing.”

Porkbusters still have a long way to go before they’ll see fundamental changes in the way Washington spends taxpayers’ money. But if the events of the last week are any indication, that change is much closer to becoming reality than it was just a few years ago.