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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: Suma who wrote (52800)3/10/2008 9:18:54 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (3) of 542623
 
Ear marks are evidently not bad in and of themselves as Karen has pointed out. IF THEY GO TO A WORTHWHILE project.

For the record, I find earmarks unacceptable. They may not be pay-offs but they're still unacceptable. My reason is that they are outside the budget process.

I have hands-on experience with how this works. Picture a scenario where appropriated spending is cut. Say, for example, that there's a fiscal crisis or maybe the appropriations committees don't get the new budget done by the cut-off date and the government goes into a reduced spending mode where everything is cut back 15%. Agencies then have to figure out where they're going to take that 15%. They may put a halt to some contracts. Typically they stop travel and training funds and overtime. Maybe delay a new program or lay off some staff. Maybe they shut down the Statue of Liberty. In any event, they decide where the cuts should be taken. But that's only with the regular appropriation. Anything earmarked continues on fully funded. So we end up fully funding somebody's library in Peoria, something that would never have survived the appropriations process, while mainline appropriated programs suffer. It's an obscene distortion, IMO. So I'd rather not be on the record as soft on earmarks.
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