Why Banning Earmarks is only the Beginning
While Republicans’ agreement to a two year ban on earmarks is a step in the right direction, we cannot afford to stop working on reducing our budget deficit, which was over $1.3 trillion last year. In truth, the ban will not prevent politicians from diverting tax dollars to local pork spending projects through other methods. In fact, the Democrats have not agreed to participate in the earmark ban at all. The biggest problem that exists here is that the ban will have a small effect on our huge budget deficit, if it has an effect at all.
At their current level of about $16 billion per year, even if we were successful in eliminating earmarks in their entirely the savings would be a drop in the bucket compared to both the $3.5 trillion federal budget and the $1.3 trillion deficit.
The other issue with earmarks is that most of them originate from within agency budgets, so eliminating them would not reduce spending; the money would simply be spent on other projects. Additionally, the President and the politicians that head up the agencies can direct monies to projects in a manner that isn’t considered an earmark but operates in much the same way.
According to Steve Daines, the ban on earmarks must only be considered a first step in taking a stand against runaway deficit spending. The next step, after the two year ban on earmarks, is to put policies in place to ensure that the Washington politicians cannot spend taxpayers’ money to suit their own agendas. It’s time to scrutinize spending bills that benefit only a few and add little in the way of job creation or growing the economy. We also need to increase transparency on how money is spent so that taxpayers can see how the taxes they pay are being spent. The ban on earmarks is a good start but there is much more to do.
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