Indiana Senator Evan Bayh says his back is sore because he’s “too cheap.”  He didn’t want to spend $30 to hire someone to shovel snow at his home.  So, he and a son did the work, instead.

Bayh will tell you his frugal spirit guides his attitude toward a $410 billion dollar spending plan in Washington, DC.  Today, the Senator told me the so-called omnibus spending bill “increases spending across the board by many times the rate of inflation.”  And that, he says, is “incredibly tone deaf” when so many people are struggling.

Bayh said he objects to $7.7 billion dollars worth of earmarks, political pet projects, in the bill.  “The government just goes on as if its impervious and above the problems that ordinary people have.  No wonder they get upset.  At this time, we ought to take those specially-appropriated earmarks out of there and we ought to look for ways to economize.”

Bayh is one of the Senators saying they will vote “No” on the bill when the time comes.  Fellow Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin says he also plans to vote “No”.  He’s another of the few Democrats who say the spending bill is too expensive.

Republican leaders admit some members of their party may vote for the spending bill — because they want the earmarks.  

On Face the Nation, recently, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dismissed concerns about these earmarks as “last year’s business.”  I asked Bayh about that comment.  “It may be last year’s business,” he said.  “But it’s this year’s money — and it’s our childrens’ debt that they’re going to have to pay off with interest to the Chinese, someday.  So, look, this is real money.  This counts and it’s got to come from someplace and that means a bigger deficit.”

Bayh said probably every government department could find a way to cut one or two percent from their budgets.  He said he prefers that to approach to the increases in the omnibus bill. 

Indiana Republican Chairman Murray Clark says watching Senator Bayh “is confusing.”  He released a statement chiding Bayh for supporting stimulus spending and then deciding to “backtrack on this recklessness” in the earmarks.

Bayh said in Clark’s “capacity as the partisan leader of the other party, he’s going to be against me no matter what I do.”  So, Bayh said he considers a ”No” vote the right thing to do.

But, the Senator may have learned a lesson about the difference between political and personal austerity.  Considering his back pain, he said: “Next time, I’ll pay the guy” to shovel.