I feel like I need to say something about all this talk about earmarks and pork. The definition of earmarks is:
congressional provisions that direct approved funds to be spent on specific projects, or that direct specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees.
And pork:
appropriation of government spending for projects that are intended primarily to benefit particular constituents or campaign contributors.
This sounds hard. But from what I understand (and I would love to discuss this with someone who actually knows something) these are moneys attached to pieces of legislation or committee reports that go to specific projects (usually pet projects) that are used in order to get people to vote for things. This obviously sounds bad. But I dont understand how it can be so legal and so accepted for so long if there was a better way to do it. And by better I mean a way that actually works. And obviously gross spending needs to be looked at. Federal bureaucracy and things that dont work need to go. But according to
Citizens Against Government Waste $18 billion was spent in pork last year. Do you know how much we spent in Iraq last
month?
$12 billion. (Off topic - that is almost $5000 a second!) So maybe pork is not the thing we need to worry about so much. Maybe we need to prioritize.
1 comment:
my understanding of earmarks and pork (to me they are very similar) is that they are attachments to bills or whatnot that are either a) used to sway the vote for something larger that may not be as popular or b) are stuck into bills or legislation at the last minute that noone really knows theyt are voting for therefor are passed becasue of the larger issue on the table because noone talked about these "attachments"
thats how i saw it anyways
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