Obama joins call for earmark hiatus

File under: How to tell when your presidential candidate is planning on being the Democratic nominee.

Barack Obama announced today that he has signed on as a cosponsor of a Senate amendment that would impose a one-year moratorium on Congressional earmarks, the secretive and expensive spending measures used by House and Senate members to bring federal dollars to their districts. The moratorium, sponsored by Jim DeMint, a deeply conservative senator from South Carolina, would apply to the fiscal year 2009 appropriations cycle.

In a statement, Obama called the current system "broken" and said he would not be requesting any earmarks for Illinois. He has requested such earmarks in the past but also pushed for more disclosure so the public knows which member is requesting how much federal money and for what.

"We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress's seniority, rather than the merit of the project," Obama said. "We can no longer accept an earmarks process that has become so complicated to navigate that a municipality or non-profit group has to hire high-priced D.C. lobbyists to do it. And we can no longer accept an earmarks process in which many of the projects being funded fail to address the real needs of our country."

The move seems aimed squarely at a general election audience: Senator John McCain, the GOP nominee, has long blasted the earmark process and vowed to veto any bill that arrived on his desk full of pork.