We're hearing a lot lately about earmarks - DC-speak for pork-barrel spending. Whether it's the "stimulus" bill signed into law last month, or the $410 billion spending bill that's supposed to tide over Uncle Sam for the rest of fiscal '09, it seems we can't get away from them....
Not so. Earmarks typically make up about 1% of the federal budget. In the spending bill being debated right now, it's a little under 2%....But really, we're talking about a pittance in the big scheme of the federal budget. Slaughter all the earmarks, and it would barely put a dent in runaway spending.
Well actually, it wouldn't even do that.
That's because earmarks come out of a total amount of federal spending that's carved in stone before the earmarks are ever doled out to the lawmakers. In other words, the money's going to get spent anyway.
The only difference is that with earmarks, individual lawmakers get a little bit of say in how it gets spent. Take earmarks out of the equation, and the decisions get made within the executive branch, or at best, among the Congressional leadership - whose primary concern would be rewarding friends and punishing enemies among the back-benchers....
As Ron Paul has pointed out in the past
Because earmarks are funded from spending levels that have been determined before a single earmark is agreed to, with or without earmarks the spending levels remain the same. Eliminating earmarks designated by Members of Congress would simply transfer the funding decision process to federal bureaucrats rather then elected representatives. In an already flawed system, earmarks can at least allow residents of Congressional districts to have a greater role in allocating federal funds - their tax dollars - than if the money is allocated behind locked doors by bureaucrats. So we can be critical of the abuses in the current system but we shouldn't lose sight of how some reforms may not actually make the system much better.
The real problem... is the size of the federal government and the amount of money we are spending in these appropriations bills....
Mr. Gonigam reiterates that point in his article today; the earmark battle serves as a convenient distraction from the larger issues. It is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Small government conservatives may be ready to reduce the number of earmarks in a spending bill, but are they ready to reconsider our $1 trillion foreign policy? Or all of the money spent enforcing anti-civil liberties legislation like the Patriot Act? Or the destruction of our dollar by an out of control Federal Reserve?
*entire article stolen from campaign for liberty