Bureaucratic Earmarks

In March of 2010, Sean Hannity did a series of shows on what he called the 102 worst earmarks.  A couple of   my favorites were:

·       #50 - Studying the impact of global warming on wild flowers in a Colorado ghost town ($500,000)

·       #49 - Bridge built over railroad crossing so 168 Nebraska town residents don’t have to wait for the trains to pass ($7 million)

·       #29 - Replacing all signage on 5 miles of road in Rhode Island ($4,403,205)

·       #15 - Deer underpass in Wyoming ($1,239,693)

·       #10 - Investing in nation-wide wind power (but most of the money has gone to foreign companies) ($2 billion)

The grand total for the 102 earmarks was $4.9 billion. 

The interesting thing is that not one of these earmarks was a Congressional earmark.  They all were federal government expenditures made by the President and appointed bureaucrats. None of them had the approval and in most cases not even the knowledge of Congress. 

In the past I have written blogs opposing Congressional earmarks attached to bills.  The total dollar amount is small as a percentage of the total government spending, but we have to start somewhere.  My biggest concern with Congressional earmarks was that they were used to pay off and reward political supporters and donors.  Any moratorium on Congressional earmarks may serve no purpose if the executive branch of the government is allowed to make the same and even less desirable expenditures. 

        The bureaucratic earmarks or expenditures are even worse and used for the same questionable purposes in many cases.  The Constitution gives Congress the control of the budget and all money spent by the government.  What has happened?  Congress has not passed a budget in years, and the executive branch of government and unelected bureaucrats seem to have carte blanche approval to spend whatever for whatever.  Congress is the legislative branch of our government and should control the purse strings.  Are we letting Congress become irrelevant?  How have we let this happen?  We must take our government back from the political ruling elite.