One last government spending post for the day: Pork
The amount of money spent on pork barrel projects — special state or local projects tacked onto federal legislation — has almost tripled over the past 10 years, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service.
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Source:
Up to Their Earmarks
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/01/27/GR2006012700168.html
The other white meat!
Is this ever going to stop? Does anyone really care what the deficit numbers are anymore? Federal level, state level, and local levels are out of control.
Repulblicans before Bush’s election used to care. Democrats never did.
Transfer money from those who earned it to the politically well-connected: Bribe the voters to re-elect you. It’s the nature of a “democratic” gov’t whose power is unrestrained by an effective Constitution.
Federalists like John Adams 200 years ago warned that it would eventually come to this.
Earmarks are a symptom of what’s wrong with Congress, but not because they’re so big. Look at the table a different way — earmarks (“pork”) as a percentage of on-budget outlays:
earmarks
1994 0.4%
1996 0.2%
1998 0.3%
2000 0.4%
2002 0.6%
2004 0.8%
I’d make you a pretty picture, but you wouldn’t even be able to distinguish the line from zero at anything but a zoomed scale.
WCW: It would be interesting to see those percentages in relation to total discretionary spending rather than just the total budget.
The result doesn’t change much. Note the modifier “on-budget” which already excludes a big chunk of nondiscretionary outlays. Discretionary spending these days is $0.8 trillion a year.
Earmarks are offensive, but they are a rounding error compared to the real problems: misguided revenue and spending priorities.