Earmarks. That word has been popping up a lot since Obama got his $410 billion omnibus bill put through. It contained nearly 9000 earmarks.
Republicans are slamming Obama for not following through of his promise to cut earmarks. Democrats are slamming Republicans for having so many earmarks in the bill. So on and so forth.
Do you know what an earmark is? Our good friends at Wikipedia define a political earmark thusly:
"In US politics, an earmark is a congressional provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees."
What that means is an earmark clearly states what the money is supposed to be spent on. It creates transparency and helps insure the money...OUR money...is used for it's intended purpose.
Each branch of the Federal government used to propose their own budgets for the coming year. Then some lunkhead came up with the bright idea of just doing one big budget plan, assigning it to the Executive branch and letting it dole out the money.
Only ~2% of the $410 billion federal spending bill (omnibus) was earmarked. Guess who gets to decide where the rest goes? That's right. The president does. What's worse, since the executive branch is now responsible for doling out the funds, it can do so at it's discretion with little, if any, oversight. Kinda makes you wonder why Obama is such a proponent of earmark elimination, huh?
Every single penny of that bill should have been earmarked so that we know where our money is going.
Earmarks in and of themselves aren't bad. It's where the earmarks direct the money...the contents of the earmark...that are bad. The omnibus bill contained earmarks for lobster research in Maine, termite research in New Orleans and a rodeo museum in South Dakota just to name a few.
An awful lot of our money is being given to a very few people. Without oversight, without earmarks, what's to keep them honest?
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