Quote:
Originally Posted by RainMaker
Earmarks account for .06% of our total national budget. Some of it is used for frivolous stuff, but some of it is actually used for legitimate expenses like a new highway. In the end, even if you cut out every earmark from the budget, it would have very little effect on our deficit.
Wasteful spending is also a matter of perspective. You may find welfare to be a waste, but someone on it would see that as something valuable. You may find the Bridge to Nowhere a huge waste, but I'm sure there were some construction workers who thought it was money well spent.
I'd guarantee that most of the public doesn't wake up and think about the latest earmark in the budget bill. They wake up thinking about their job, faith, and family. Whether you agree with them taking that matter lightly is not the point. My point was that the average American has bigger things in his life to worry about.
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Yeah, I'm not sure I could disagree more with that characterization. Minimizing the impact of things being added to bills is off the mark. There's a lot of things that are snuck through that should never see the light of day. The stimulus bill was a fine example of legislators passing a law not even fully knowing what they were voting on. Your percentage is also very much up for argument, as the criteria used for wasteful endeavors depending on the person defining it can be different depending on who's making that judgement.