It's that time of year again! And no, we're actually not talking about the War on Christmas, for a change. No, it's time for Congress to try to pass an omnibus spending bill, which means the right-wing media is drumming up all the phony outrage they can about earmark spending.

Yesterday, the Senate put out a year-end spending bill requesting about $1.1 trillion (some sources say $1.2 trillion) in appropriations. So it goes without saying that Fox & Friends devoted several segments of today's show to highlight the earmarks in the bill. The first segment, which singled out a few earmarks for faux sanctimonious outrage, began with the co-hosts harping heavily on the total cost of the bill, with on-screen text reading: "$1.2 Trillion In Pork: Senate Dems Unveil 1924 Page Spending Bill."

Wait. Does Fox really think that the entire bill is “pork?” Because that's certainly what their headline seems to suggest. If Fox is defining “pork” as earmark spending, as the rest of their segment implies, the “pork” here is actually about $8 billion. In fact, co-host Steve Doocy even says this himself, around the same time that the text airs on screen. Referencing a speech made by Sen. John McCain on the Senate floor -- clips of which are aired during the show -- Doocy said, “In [the bill], Republicans have been pouring over it, and they have found at least 6000 earmarks totaling $8 billion, for really important stuff, like this, stuff we can't live without” before reviewing a few of the earmark projects.

McCain's number appears to be accurate. That means Fox's assertion that the bill is "$1.2 trillion in pork" is off by a factor of...150.

Next, the co-hosts rattle off a list of earmark projects they find especially egregious, outlined in detail below. You might notice something these projects have in common: they were all requested by Democrats. In fact, the segment seems to suggest that Democrats always request earmarks, and Republicans always oppose them. (Though co-host Brian Kilmeade does note briefly that Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell indeed requested earmarks in this bill.) Kilmeade even went so far as to characterize Congressional and Presidential support for earmark reform this way: “Do you remember when President Obama came out and said, 'I kind of agree with what the Republicans are doing, banning all earmarks?'” Actually, no, Kilmeade, I remember when Obama voiced support for earmark reform during the 2008 campaign.

To give credit where credit's due, in a segment later in the show, Fox & Friends didn't shy away from calling out the top requesters of earmarks, by number of projects, who were: Sen. Thad Cochran and Sen. Roger Wicker, both Republicans from Mississippi. However, in the multiple segments that the show aired on the topic, this was the only time that they mentioned the top two “earmarkers” were Republican.

There's another question their faux outrage begs, which is whether or not these earmarked projects really have little or no value. Here are some of the projects Fox chose to target:

• $80 million for Pacific salmon preservation in Washington (“That's for Senator Patty Murray,” Doocy said.)
• $3,490,000 for Formosan Subterranean Termites Research in Louisiana (“Thank you, Mary Landrieu. We can't live without that,” Doocy sneered.)
• $500,000 for obesity research in Texas (Guest host Dana Perino: “I'll tell you for free -- people eat too much!”)
• $208,000 for beaver management in North Carolina

Let's set aside for a moment the debate about how such projects should be funded. The fact is that none of these particular projects seems as worthless as Fox suggests. The $80 million for Pacific salmon preservation isn't “for Senator Patty Murray,” it's to protect an endangered species so important that the U.S. -- that is, then-President Ronald Reagan -- and Canada signed the Pacific Salmon Treaty in 1985 to protect them. Termite-control projects actually get four earmarks in this bill, probably because, as the Termite Institute notes, in the U.S., termites “do more economic damage annually than all tornados, hurricanes, and windstorms, combined,” costing homeowners about "$5 billion each year." It hardly needs saying that obesity truly is a serious problem in the U.S.: an estimated 26.7 percent of adults were obese in 2009, according to a study from the Center for Disease Control. (Besides, I'm not sure anyone on Fox is qualified to advise on healthy eating, given the network's War on Nutrition.) And finally, while “beaver management” may sound silly, McClatchy reported last year that similar past efforts helped save “nearly $5 million in potential flood damage to farms, timber lands, roadways and other infrastructure.”

What is not up for debate, however, is whether or not these projects add significantly to the deficit: they don't. And by running these “pork” segments whenever it's time for Congress to pass another spending bill, Fox is misleading viewers about how (not) expensive earmarks really are. As GOP Senator George Voinovitch of Ohio was quoted saying in a December 15 article in The Washington Post, “I have a disagreement with my colleagues on earmarks...Earmarks really don't add to the cost of government...We're fooling the American people when we tell them the problem [with the deficit] is earmarks.”

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