Earmarks aren’t bad, and pork is more than a disagreement

Jeff Rosenberg at the Twin Cities Daily Liberal has an outstanding post illustrating how meaningful discussions of earmarked funds and pork-barrel spending have been all but eliminated from current political discourse. Due to bandwagon bashing of not only truly wasteful expenditures but any spending someone simply isn’t a fan of, we’ve allowed discussion of this serious issue to be neutered.

Rosenberg writes:

Think about this for a moment: If our members of Congress aren’t inserting spending into spending bills, who’s supposed to be doing it? The reason all spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives is that the representatives understand their districts and their needs. As long as spending bills stay within established budget guidelines, doesn’t it make sense to let our representatives direct the spending where it’s needed most?

That’s not to say that earmarks aren’t abused to create real pork-barrel spending. But just because a Congressman inserts an earmark into a bill for a local spending project doesn’t make it “pork.” Pork-barrel spending occurs when that earmark is used for spending that doesn’t really meet any need other than shoveling money to the Representative’s district.

Read the original: “Pork: The most meaningless word in politics.” And thanks for writing it, Jeff.

Photo courtesy of kuow on Flickr