We’re locking arms here bro. I completely agree. Earmarks are symptom of bigger problems.

The problem is, most people either don’t care enough, don’t know enough, or like that the federal government has accrued this power unto itself.

Both branches have strenghts and weaknesses when it comes to allocating funds and congress has the authority attach conditions if it chooses.

At the end of the day, all that matters is the total size of the appropriations. Both branches and both parties have been complicit in the methodical buildup of our fiscal nightmare.

I’m not going to be distracted by minutiae like earmarks while everyone continues to ignore the core problem.

The federal government is fundamentally incapable acting responsibly with the insane amount of power it has acquired in the past 100 years. That’s why most of the power was reserved for the states in the first place.

He’s so out of touch with reality with spending that he actually thinks the American people will applaud his new Executive Order ignoring any future earmarks that weren’t voted on by Congress. I say too little too late Mr. President. Earmar…

That’s not important, Jeff?

I’m not saying that earmarks are the ONLY federal spending problem, but they ARE a big problem. They encourage corruption. They ARE self-definitionally CORRUPTION. Many are added as extra-budget items, so unless they are ADDED, the money is not spent on those unconstitutional pork projects assigned.

Spending should be cut drastically across the board on everything but defense (and even their waste, fraud and abuse needs to be taken seriously). Many programs, departments and spare bureaucrats need to be eliminated right now. Cut several hundred billion dollars and no one would miss what we “lose” in those cuts.

We also need a flat tax and to eliminate corporate tax and taxes on personal investments altogether.

There’s much more that should be done to restore our liberty, but earmarks ARE one part of that and that was the topic of discussion.

~Snooper~In the State of the Union address on 28 Jan 2008, President Bush let all of th ……

Ya know how much money we’d save if we removed every earmark? $0. Earmarks just determine how the money is spent. The absence of them just leaves the department secretaries with full discretion.

To reign in spending, you have to attack departmental appropriations.