Hello, there is no money.
Earmarks are corruption, not budget reducers. The fact that they are hidden from sight makes it even more so. We need to get everything on the table so people can see what is going on.
Nope, banning earmarks won’t balance the budget.
Earmarks wouldn’t be needed if the money remained in the areas the revenue was generated.
Talk about a load of crap to try to justify an unconstitutional practice. The author has no idea what he is talking about and obviously never has worked in DC. Government’s budgets are based on what is known as a baseline budget. Each year’s budget starts with the prior year’s total as a zero point baseline. All line items in the budget contribute to the total continuation of the spending each year. If your department’s budget, for example, exceeds spending by 10%, that creates a new baseline. On the other hand, if you don’t spend your entire budget, your budget is cut for the next year based on the underspending. Anyone who has ever run government contracts knows this first hand. You are ‘encouraged’ to meet or exceed all your budgeted amounts. There are no rewards for coming in under budget because it reduces future budgets.
..and another point, unused budget items DO NOT become discretionary items for the Executive branch. The executive branch has their own line for a discrectionary budget. I’m not sure what orifice they pulled this out of but I have some ideas.
The entire concept of Earmarks/Pork is the antithesis of Conservative values as not only does it increase or continue over spending, but it is no-representation spending. Rarely do earmarks have anything to do with the bills they are attached to. Spending happens by whim, not by representative voting on an issue. Earmarks are also used by the government to ‘buy’ behavior- the collectivist controlling the masses by throwing back little cookies at them by funding little pet projects.
Probably the worst excuse is that it just ‘returns money to the taxpayer’. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is simply redistribution of funds from taxpayers to pet projects. That type of thinking is what gets us into this massive collectivist attitude of the government who thinks it can redistribute funds from those who are able to those who ‘need’.
The budget process is totally screwed up because congressional accounting is totally fraudulent. They’re spending money we don’t have and they know it even though they won’t admit to it and the MSM is in on the big lie.
The pizza analogy would only be apt if it were first stolen, then the initial stealing of the pizza was used to justify continued stealing, each time, taking more and more from the pizza maker.
earmarks are a license to steal. by definition it is corruption.
And most earmarks are over-reaches of the Fed Gov’t...it isn’t the job of the Fed Gov’t to bail out the local cronies...like Reid’s son!!!