Earmarks

The national media loves to cover earmarks. I think the big reason is because the media doesn't have to really do any reporting on them other than find one that sounds funny and mock it. It makes for good press because 'government spends 200 dollars on a hammer' type stories always play well. The problem is that the press's lack of reporting leads to a lot of misconceptions on earmarks.

First of all, earmarks account for a very small percentage of spending. The number of earmarks in the recent omnibus totaled 7.7 billion dollars. While that is certainly a lot of cash, keep in mind that the most recent omnibus was 410 billion dollars. Even in the worst cast scenario, that all earmarks are bad, as a percentage it is less than two percent of that total. I'm not trying to make a case against keeping an eye on D.C. and making sure that they spend our money wisely. I just think it is probably better to focus on that other 98 percent first.

However, the biggest problem is that even if we took every earmark out of the omnibus we still wouldn't save a single dime.

This is not open for discussion. An earmark simply is a congressional decision to allocate part of appropriation for a particular purpose. Eliminating the allocation doesn't reduce the appropriation, it simply leaves the allocation decision to a federal department or agency rather than to Congress

With the above in mind, either the politicians and pundits ranting against excessive spending and blaming it on earmarks either don't know this and are stupid or they think you are. I guess it could also be both.