A Senate Republican task force on earmarks is expected to stop short of temporarily freezing funding for pet projects, breaking with the party’s presidential nominee and House GOP leaders who are trying to make it a wedge issue in the election, according to people involved in the effort.

The five-member task force, convened in January by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), meets Friday to move toward a consensus position. The issue has continued to dog congressional Republicans who are under enormous pressure from their base to rein in earmarking. Final recommendations are due by March 15.

There is a “zero percent” chance that a short-term freeze will be recommended, according to one Republican involved in the talks.

The chairman of the task force, Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.), said it is “very unlikely” the task force will call for a temporary halt in earmarks, but he said chances are “reasonably good” the group will find “some consensus” on other ways to control and reform the practice.

Making a strong consensus even more daunting, McConnell has asked the group to report out only those recommendations upon which members unanimously agree. But the task force’s members run the gamut from Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), who sought no earmarks last year, to Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), who secured more than $830 million worth of earmarks in 2007, the most in Congress.

Cochran, who serves as the ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said a temporary freeze on earmarks “sounds like a bad idea to me.”

“I don’t think that’s very wise, to give up a constitutional responsibility that is given to Congress,” he added.

Coburn, one of the most outspoken critics of earmarks, would not comment on the task force’s work.

The other two members on the task force, Sens. Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Mike Crapo of Idaho, sponsored $160 million and $121 million in earmarks, respectively, with other members last year.

In the spending bills that President Bush signed into law last year, Congress added almost 13,000 earmarks worth more than $18 billion, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. The group says the earmarks represent a 23 percent cut from the “high-water mark” of 2005 when Republicans controlled Congress, but it is less than the 50 percent cut House Democrats aimed for when they took the majority in January 2007.

The issue has roiled congressional Republicans and become more complicated this election year. Senior Republicans, especially those who sit on the appropriations panels, argue that it is the right of Congress to set funding priorities across the country, so long as the process is transparent.

But more junior Republicans — supported by their fiscal-conservative base — have called for an end to the practice, saying the ballooning method of inserting line items into spending bills for parochial projects is a waste of taxpayer dollars and has led to corruption in Congress.

Those who support the practice say that earmarks are critical in an election year to show voters how effective they are on Capitol Hill.

But this election year, Republicans have picked John McCain as their presidential nominee. The senator from Arizona has made his push against earmarks a centerpiece of his platform against “wasteful” Washington spending, and has excoriated his Democratic opponents, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), for securing $98 million and $342 million in earmarks last year, respectively.

McCain will return to the Senate next Tuesday to address Republicans in a closed-door policy luncheon. But it’s unclear whether he will be on the floor to vote on an amendment by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) that would impose a one-year ban on earmarks.

McCain says he supports the amendment. But top Senate Republicans, including McConnell, an appropriator who sponsored $185 million in pet projects last year, have waited for the task force’s recommendations before taking a position on the DeMint measure.

DeMint said McCain is in a strong position regardless of whether the measure wins adoption to the budget resolution next week. Democrats are expected largely to vote against the amendment.

“I think if there is some disagreement here with him, it will only help him,” DeMint said Thursday.

“It will show that he’s fighting the establishment and that he is trying to regain the fiscal responsibility mantle for the party.”    

House Republican leaders have been much more aggressive than their Senate counterparts on the issue as well, seeing it as a divide between the two parties. They have repeatedly pressured Democrats to back a temporary earmark ban, and House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) slammed Democrats on the Budget Committee this week for not supporting a short-term freeze on funding the projects.

“The vote today … once again shows the Democratic majority is not serious about bringing real change to the way in which Washington spends the taxpayers’ money,” said Boehner, who does not request earmarks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled Thursday that the Democrats might be open to adopting a short-term earmark freeze.

“My patience is running out on earmarks,” Pelosi said. “We will either have them or we won’t.”

Democrats say they have been more aggressive in cutting earmarks than their Republican predecessors, but they also recognize the election-year split within the GOP conference.

“Sen. McCain has talked about being anti-earmarks all along,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), an appropriator. “But he’s got some folks on his side over there that have been very prolific on earmarks — I’ll be anxious to see how anxious they are of his message.”