$1-million Woodstock earmark is abandoned

WASHINGTON — Hippies used to say, if you remember Woodstock, you weren’t really there. Republicans say presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton can forget about getting $1 million in taxpayer funds for a Woodstock museum.

Sens. Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, Democrats from New York, want to earmark the federal money for a museum that would commemorate the 1969 music festival in their state.

“Woodstock Museum is a shining example of what’s wrong with Washington on pork-barrel, out-of-control spending,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a Republican presidential hopeful. It’s an example, he said, of “the earmark pork-barrel spending which has made the American people disenchanted and angry.”

Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) moved Thursday to strip the Woodstock earmark from a massive health and education spending bill on the Senate floor. They won a key 52-42 vote -- seeping with presidential politics -- and the earmark was dropped.

Five Democrats voted against the provision. So did old-school Republicans on the appropriations committee who previously have voted against conservative criticism of senators’ earmarks.

“With all the pressing needs facing our country today, from entitlement reform to children’s healthcare to the war in Iraq, the idea that the federal government should fund a museum that celebrates a 38-year-old concert is simply absurd,” Kyl said.

It’s the type of parochial project that’s easy for critics to make fun of. Conservatives call it a hippie museum and a taxpayer-funded LSD flashback.

Coburn said the project sounded like a good idea, but he also said taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill.

The Woodstock museum is scheduled to open next year. The $1 million in federal funds would be a small fraction of the overall $100-million cost.