There was a time in Rep. Connie Mack’s career when his website proudly highlighted a hometown paper article praising him for “bringing home the federal bacon.”

That was so 2008.

Today, Republican voters want a diet. And Mack, a candidate for U.S. Senate, is fending off his fellow Republican opponents who are bashing him for voting for billions of dollars in earmarks since his election to Congress in 2004.

Mack says he’s “proud” of the earmarks he submitted for his Southwest Florida district — namely for widening Interstate 75. But he says he supports a new moratorium on earmarks because times have changed and the budget process had been abused by others.

“We fought for a fair return on tax dollars for my district. But certainly, we’re at a different time and place right now. And that is a $15 trillion debt that, with the passage of the increasing of the debt ceiling, will be $17 trillion,” he said. “We’re in a very dangerous place.”

Mack says the real big-spending culprit is Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who voted for President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus and healthcare plans. Mack didn’t name his critical Republican opponents, George LeMieux and Adam Hasner, who have had government-spending issues of their own.

Mack’s on-again, off-again relationship with earmarking is a lesson in how Congress works, and how Republican candidates have had to adjust to an increasingly conservative electorate.

Representatives and senators often lament spending and earmarks, but then they’ll try to stuff the budget with them. Sometimes they vote for other members’ earmarks to ensure their own pass. Sometimes they’ll get other members to sponsor their earmarks to avoid leaving their own fingerprints. Other times, they’ll say their earmarks were needed for their community, but call earmarks from other members wasteful.

Despite his criticisms of Nelson, Mack joined with the Democrats to earmark federal spending. Also, Mack has joined Nelson and a majority of Congress to vote for appropriations bills stuffed with 28,000 earmarks worth $87 billion since 2006, according to an analysis of his votes and data from the yearly “Congressional Pig Book” produced by the conservative group Citizens Against Government Waste.

Mack has directly helped earmark 33 hometown spending projects that total at least $199 million , according to information from his office and a database of federal earmarks maintained by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense watchdog group.

Mack disputes one earmark attributed to him, in 2007, by the former House budget chairman, Republican Don Young of Alaska, who accused the representative of disavowing an earmark in Bonita Springs after it became controversial.

Some of Mack’s known earmarks — $7.8 million — were co-sponsored with Nelson as well as other members from Florida. Unlike Republicans, Nelson initially balked at a new ban on earmarks, saying they were good for the community because they ensure the state gets more of its fair share of tax money.

“Sen. Nelson still hasn’t learned that he’s got to stop spending to cut the deficit and balance the budget,” said Mack, who says that his own earmarks amounted to “a fair return of taxpayer dollars to Southwest Florida.”