But if you look closely, you might see lawmakers winking and nodding at each other even as they decry those specially tagged funds they put into federal spending years—by the boatloads every year—to fund pet projects back home.

First, House Republicans, after their GOP retreat last weekend, called for an “earmark moratorium” that would temporarily halt funding for all earmarks, as long as Democrats agreed, and set up a bipartisan committee to look at ways to improve the way Washington spends taxpayers money.

Okay, so that’s a no-brainer political move for Republicans, since they know Democrats aren’t likely to go along with such a plan and the GOP will never have to actually live with that pledge. And this from a caucus that gorged itself on pork projects when it held the House majority.

Then came last night’s State of the Union threat from President George W. Bush that he would veto any spending bill that did not cut earmarks in half. This from a president who never vetoed any spending bills while Republicans were in charge and were stuffing thousands of earmarks worth millions of dollars into every spending bill they passed.

Bush’s statement was “curious,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “Where was this ferver and determination when the Republicans” were in charge? Durbin asked at a breakfast meeting with reporters on Tuesday.

Durbin was happy to rise up in defense of earmarks, saying they usuallly fund meritorious projects and noting that he usually sends out news releases bragging about earmarks he has snagged–as does almost every other member of Congress.  Durbin also noted that Democrats last year passed new rules making the earmarking process more transparent and cutting the number of earmarks by more than 40 percent in last year’s appropriations bills.

“We’ve come a long way,” Durbin said, avoiding a direct response about whether lawmakers would meet Bush’s challenge.

Durbin was acknowledging a political reality—that lawmakers love pork projects too much to wean themselves, no matter how much they say they want to stop.

Indeed, one watchdog group called the president’s veto pledge “an empty threat” and said if he had really wanted to tackle earmarks, he could have nixed them from last year’s spending bills by ordering federal agencies not to fund them.

“By not including this year’s spending bills, the President is passing the buck on reigning in earmarks,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “As a lame duck, it’s unlikely that the President will even see any of the spending bills that he wants to fix before he leaves the Oval Office … because Congress can just run out the clock on him.”