The Personal and the Political (Earmarks)

Cleaning graffiti photo by cannonsnapper

Sg, I noticed today that we recently (though I’m not sure exactly when) passed a milestone. I once would have saved cleaning the house for your naptime, because cleaning the house while watching you was more trouble than doing the two things separately (even if I had to give up the personal time I might have had during your nap).

By this morning, it seemed pretty reasonable to clean the house with your “help” so that I could do goofy blog stuff during your nap. You’re more independent, and you can follow basic instructions (like “let’s not take the dirty dishes out of the washer just yet”).

On another note, there is a guy running for president of the United States who is proposing massive tax cuts. Our current president was also a big fan of tax cuts, and people are wondering where the government will get the money it needs for domestic programs and foreign wars if we have even more tax cuts. This guy running for president says he’ll put a stop to “government earmarks” to reduce government spending. It amazes me how many people don’t realize how silly this is.

An “earmark” is when some money in an appropriations bill gets dedicated to a specific thing. For example, Congress might approve $800 million in spending on roads in Alabama, and the bill might include an earmark saying that $150 million of that must be spent on a particular road in an Alabama senator’s home town. Remove the earmark, and the total spending is still $800 million. No savings.

Now, it may be the case that government spending would be more efficient without earmarks, and thus cost a little less in the long run. But that’s far from obvious to me. (It may be that home state Congressmen and -women know better than the Congress as a whole what federal dollars should be spent on, which would make earmarks more, not less, efficient.)

Just wanted to point that out in case people are still having this stupid conversation when you’re of voting age. Enjoy your nap.