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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (46206)	10/12/2010 7:48:17 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

I am not aware of any language in The Constitution authorizing Congress to earmark for specific projects. See en.wikisource.org An earmark is not some recent invention. Its not contrary to the letter or spirit of the constitution, its just congress using its power to appropriate money. Its been abused to the point that I can agree that we are better off with few or no earmarks, but nothing earmarks are not inherently wrong. The problem isn't inherent in the mechanism, a member of congress could earmark money in a very reasonable way, its rather a practical problem of politics, than in reality this is not particularly likely to occur. One take that I read is that earmarks might be good BECAUSE they are more corrupt. That the politicians are going to reward their favored interest anyway, and if they have to make new mass programs rather than targeted earmarks to do so, than they will spend a lot more (maybe billions to hundreds of billions instead of hundreds of thousands to low billions). That's cynical, but there could be something there. Not sure I buy it. As of now I'm still an earmark opponent.