Earmarks: Not What They Seem to Be

Dear Paul Krugman,

John McCain says he is going to reform Washington and makes a very big deal about earmarks. So I decided to find out what the total cost of earmarks were in the federal budget in 2008. Fortunately that information is on the Internet. The total was $16,501,833,000. Or put another way, about 1 1/2 months of the cost of our misbegotten adventure in Iraq. I would love to see you write about this point: getting rid of all earmarks would be like dropping rose petals into the Grand Canyon and waiting for an echo if they think this will make a whit of difference in federal spending.

It's a cruel joke that they spend all their time talking about this stuff. McCain's grizzly bear example is getting really stale. If this is what he thinks is important, then it's a huge problem that he thinks he's qualified to be president. To hear him in interviews, he often sounds as if he, like his impulsively selected running mate, is winging it. As a professor, I'm sure you've seen answers on essay tests where the student was trying to bluff his way through the question (first repeat the question and then throw in cliché after cliché hoping that you will think he said something). That's the way both McCain and Palin sound when interviewed and asked questions that require some mastery of government and the issues that confront us. I could go on and on, but you get the point. I hope you will talk about the inconsequentiality of earmarks in solving American problems. It's pathetic that people are fed this stuff as if it actually had nutritional value.

John

Postscript: From Jonathan Alter's piece on which candidate represents change in the September 22, 2008 Newsweek:

The single domestic issue that McCain gets passionate about is pork-barrel politics ("earmarking"), the 200-year-old process by which members of Congress slip in goodies for their constituents outside the normal appropriations system. Earmarks account for less than 2 percent of the budget; the "Bridge to Nowhere" is offensive but amounts to the cost of a few hours in Iraq. McCain claims he has never sought earmarks for Arizona. This is mostly true. But the vast majority of all the bills he has sponsored in Congress have been favors for Arizona's Native American population. While the Indians deserve it, the difference from earmarks is procedural. Both amount to bringing home the bacon.