Obama's Inner Circle at the Trough

Overall, the president, vice president, the White House chief of staff and the four Cabinet secretaries who were in Congress last year showed up in the records of the House and Senate Appropriations committees as the sponsors or cosponsors of hundreds of millions of dollars in pet projects in the $410 billion spending bill.

As for the earmark that bears the name of the President -- it will be disappeared, and "The [Senate Appropriations] {c}ommittee will attribute that earmark to other senators on the list of that provision's supporters, but not Obama."

Well, I guess that's one way to give effect to what Robert Gibbs called "the president's seriousness on this."