By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Here’s an old joke: it’s pork if it’s in somebody else’s district.

But seriously, folks, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says earmarks are good and always have been. Example: the announcement Monday of a $10.2 million project to consolidate seven buildings – up to seventy years old – into one modern facility at the air base at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield.

“It comes back to the technology,” said Maj. Gen. Rich Neely, Illinois’ adjutant general, “and so many of our facilities are older and not really built for the modernized military that we have today. That is what we are looking at today, that and the technology, the consolidation under one building will make a huge difference in how we train.”

“We get to designate projects that we think are important,” Durbin (pictured) said of earmarks. “They kind of fell out of favor over a number of years, but I have always supported earmarks because it means bringing tax money home to Illinois for specific purposes.”

Durbin was not shy to mention the other U.S. Senator from Illinois, Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), whom he called the veterans’ top champion in the Senate.