Welcome to the land of eternal earmarks

Welcome to the wonderful world of earmarks; those lovely inventions that enable our esteemed politicians in Washington to pay their political debts at public expense. We cannot do without them and I am sure that ways and means will be quickly discovered to perpetuate this tradition in spite of audible public outcry.

Earmarks are parochial add ons, or riders, to important legislation. Popular bills are favored because they pass quickly. For example, the Patriot Act legislated shortly after 9/11 zipped through both chambers with hardly a flinch. Appended to this Act were a myriad of earmarks, each of which required a comparative pittance of public expenditure. Collectively, they also amounted to little by comparison with the subject bill. Hence, they are not worth Congressional time to fight against. More important, precious few legislators want to fight against earmarks given their raison d'etre, to wit, repay political debts, or at least to expand a legislator's electoral base.

An order of magnitude figure of the number of individual earmarks in a single piece of legislation is in the thousands. Yes, the thousands. This makes sense, because there are a lot of individuals, groups, businesses and who knows what who contribute significantly to a congressional election.

A plank in our Dear Leader's presidential campaign included the elimination of earmarks. That promise lasted until he signed his first bill. In fairness, O's first bill was the TARP legislation which had been formulated at the end of the W era. TARP contained heaps of earmarks, but given its origins, they were grandfathered. Significantly, there was a hue and cry over threats to delete the earmarks and O quickly learned there was no way he would succeed in eliminating them. Major House and Senate figures were adamant that earmarks would remain institutionalized, thank you very much.

Ironically, and tactfully, the Republicans took up the anti-earmark crusade during the mid-term election last November. Key Republican figures are making every effort to persuade other Republicans to join this crusade, but with only limited success. The crusaders are at last aware that the public is disgusted with Congress in general and with the particular way legislators thread earmarks into major bills to suit their state electorates. I believe the crusaders understand that they cannot resist earmarks any longer without incurring public wrath, demonstrations and even violence.

The image of our Senators and Representatives has changed over the years, or at least it has cycled. Their image following the WWII was dominated by one of honor, trust and public service. In suspect this was more the result of public naivete than good character. The character has not changed, but the public has matured and become somewhat more realistic about our Congressional leaders. Adjectives describing them would include imperious, vain, arrogant, fawning, insincere, elitist, superior, self-satisfied and smug. This is not exhaustive, but sufficiently indicative to deliver my message, and more to the point, the public message; clean up your act.

It will not happen. Our representatives in Washington have for too long been sucking the milk and honey that defines America leaving the masses with bread and water. Costs of living have increased far in advance of wages and salaries. Professional services have gone wild in comparison for the lower and middle class capacity to pay for them. This includes medical, legal, dental, accounting, finance, engineering and the money we pay to our representatives for salaries and allowances. In addition, Civil Service salaries have skyrocketed far beyond what they were relative to the private sector and to what the public is getting from these services.