The pledge by congressional Demo-crats to ban all pork from the federal budget isn't quite as lean as it looks.

It was startling to hear Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., of all people, promise to eradicate pork from the fiscal 2007 budget. Byrd, incoming chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is known as the King of Pork for bringing home more than $3 billion in pet projects called "earmarks" to his state in the last 15 years.

Back in West Virginia, news of a temporary end to pork-barrel spending must have sent shock waves through the Robert C. Byrd Metals Fabrication Center, the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex, and the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope observatory. Not to mention the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center, named for the senator's late wife.

Despite Byrd's record, he and incoming House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., vowed to freeze spending at 2006 levels for most federal agencies whose appropriations for fiscal 2007 have not been completed. Their action would kill about 10,000 pending earmarks worth nearly $17 billion.

Earmarks aren't all bad, but clearly Congress needs to rein them in. In last year's budget, the Republican-led Congress spent a record $29.3 billion on pork projects, according to the nonpartisan, Washington-based watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste. Cracking down on earmarks is worth pursuing annually.

But it's uncertain how much money will be saved this year. One of only two appropriations bills approved by the outgoing Congress was for defense, a favored vehicle for earmarks. This year's defense bill contains about 2,600 earmarks worth a total of $12 billion. The other spending bill was for homeland security, with at least 40 more earmarks worth roughly $2 billion. That's about $14 billion in earmarks already signed into law.

And Democrats might end up just redirecting some earmarks as regular spending within federal programs. They said they would shift some money to areas where they believe President Bush has been stingy, such as health research and grants to local police departments. Remember the $223 million "bridge to nowhere" for Alaska? Congress killed that earmark after much public outrage, but lawmakers quietly slipped the bridge money to Alaska anyway in other transportation grants.

The president, too, will get more discretion in how to spend some of the remaining money for fiscal 2007, leaving open another avenue for pork. Also, Democratic leaders said earmarks that didn't make it this year could be included in fiscal 2008, as long as sponsors identified themselves. If 2007 turns out to be a lean year for pork, will 2008 be extra fatty?

This temporary ban on pork also might not prevent the House and Senate tax-writing committees from bestowing targeted "special privileges" to corporations seeking tax breaks.

Give the Democrats credit for talking about curbing this addictive, wasteful habit. But when Congress reconvenes in January, lawmakers need to follow through on their commitment to make it nearly impossible for colleagues to slip these hometown goodies into the budget anonymously. As the King of Pork has demonstrated, it will be an annual battle.