Pork and Perspective

Typical of the "all earmarks are bad crowd is(are?) Citizens against Government Waste.

In conjunction with the bipartisan Congressional Porkbusters Coalition, CAGW has developed seven criteria for identifying pork-barrel spending. All of the items in the Congressional Pig Book Summary meet at least one of CAGW's seven criteria, but most satisfy at least two:

• Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
• Not specifically authorized;
• Not competitively awarded;
• Not requested by the President;
• Greatly exceeds the President's budget request or the previous year's funding;
• Not the subject of congressional hearings;
• Serves only a local or special interest.

Sounds good huh? Hard to argue with. Now let's look at the rhetoric in their report about one of the earmarks

$700,000 by Senate CJS Appropriations Subcommittee member Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green to complete a monitoring system that will collect real-time weather observations through a statewide grid of stations in Kentucky. Apparently the Weather Channel is not sufficient.

The total of earmarks in the Pork Book are about 19 Billion Dollars. That is on the order of $1 per American per week or one half of one percent of federal government spending. Is it a lot of money? Sure. Does it make any difference whatsoever in the grand scheme of things? Nope.

This is a feel good organization that plays into the meme about government waste, nothing more.

The punch line?
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