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In the wake of a midterm election that saw the GOP score victory on the backs of promises to cut spending and increase accountability in the capital, Senate Republicans on Tuesday instituted a self-imposed ban on earmarks.

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Earmarks are pet projects that lawmakers insert into spending bills to direct money to their home states – some for perfectly good causes, some not so much – but they have come to symbolize a culture in Washington full of special favors and runaway expenditures. Cue the GOP ban on earmarks, a move sure to score political points for the party. .

But will it really do any good?

For starters, it's a voluntary, non-binding moratorium, so any lawmaker could decide to break the pledge at any time.

In addition, scrapping earmarks will hardly balance the books on Capitol Hill. While the $16 billion that Congress spent on earmarks in fiscal year 2010 might sound like a lot of money, it is only a tiny fraction of the total federal budget. As Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine pointed out earlier this week, earmarks account for "less than one percent of overall federal expenditures."



Moreover, some of the same GOP senators who pledged to support the ban said that they couldn't promise to stick to it.

"I have consistently voted for the elimination of earmarks in the past and will support the earmark moratorium resolution today," Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, said in a statement on Tuesday. "However, there are times when crises arise, or issues come forth of such importance to Georgia, such as critical support to the port of Savannah, and the nation that I reserve the right to ask Congress and the president to approve funding."

That was the same approach voiced by another Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

I respect the spirit in which this moratorium has been agreed to and hope it will lead to a better use of taxpayer dollars," Graham said on Tuesday. "However, I maintain the right to seek funding to protect our national security or where the jobs and economy of South Carolina are at risk. If the Obama Administration and their bureaucrats in the federal agencies take action against the best interests of South Carolina, I will take swift action to correct their wrongs."

Such a "yes, but" attitude speaks to some of the GOP old guard's chief concerns about an earmark ban in the first place. The plan was the brainchild of Graham's fellow senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, a champion of Tea-Party aligned members.



But it initially met with stern opposition from party leaders such as Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY.

Only hours before McConnell changed his stance and decided to support DeMint's earmark ban, another old guard Republican, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, took to the Senate floor to tout a bill he has introduced that would implement the recommendations outlined last fall by a group of government watchdogs. Inhofe's bill would establish a public database of earmarks and ban campaign contributions from earmark recipients. But that idea hasn't received the groundswell of support from the GOP that DeMint's proposal has.

It did, however, win the praise of one of those government watchdogs that was behind the initial recommendations – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

"CREW has long advocated that if the practice of earmarking continues, there must be real transparency and accountability in the process," CREW said in a blog post on their website. "Over the years, neither party's efforts at reforming the earmarking process has been completely successful. In this light, CREW applauds Sen. Inhofe for embracing a commonsense approach to end the abuse of earmarking."

"I think a lot of this is about getting people on record," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, told reporters on Tuesday. "Some of it is just getting people to have to vote on it."

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