The Opposite of Progress

An old joke suggests that the opposite of progress is congress. Taxpayers for Common Sense did a release yesterday which verifies the nostrom. When the democrats took control of the body in 2007 they promised to reduce earmarks by 50%.

Last year there were 11,234 identified earmarks (valued at just under $15 billion) and another 1600 in non-attributed earmarks.The total for these gifts of funds is about $18.3 billion. That is a 23% reduction compared to 2005 but less than half of what was promised.

In case you are interested Taxpayers for Common Sense has the database of all earmarks on an Excel Spreadsheet. When you look at the list some things seem quite mundane. But a majority of these look like simple rent seeking by politicians of all stripes. There is a whole lot of money to increase advocacy. Does that really make sense? $423,000 to the California Innocence Project? There are several projects, each of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, to study obesity in children. There are also a veritable Christmas tree of projects to fund various efforts to enhance DARE (Drug Abuse Resistence Education) - whose demonstrated success is rather qualified. There is $141,000 for wireless modems for police vehicles in Escondido, CA. (Does that mean the federal government should buy these devices for every city in the country?) We're spending almost half a million dollars for new ferry boats in Puget Sound.

Some of these projects may even be good ideas. But are all of them the responsibility of the federal government? The Associated Press did an interactive map by state which can show who gets the most in gross terms and who gets the most per capita. California gets $25.44 per capita from these remembrances. If I did not know who was actually paying for these things, it might even be amusing. But the next time your member of congress brags about "bringing home the bacon" don't forget where the bacon actually came from.