I fully agree with most of your and Ponnoru's points. The part I have trouble with is "...getting rid of earmarks saves taxpayers no money."

Twenty years ago, I worked at the Office of Naval Research, the Navy's agency for investing in basic (i.e., university) scientific research. At that time, practically all of our allotment of the taxpayers' money went to top-notch scientists at big-time research universities. By now, former colleagues tell me, well over half of the ONR budget is sucked out by earmarks. So, yeah, no money is "saved" when your tax dollars, when they might have funded a brilliant proposal from Prof. Soongetta Nobel at Columbia, for work that would triple the range of Navy sonar, instead go to Prof. Billy Joe Bumfuzzle at West Waxahatchie Votech, because the latter institution is in Congressman Bilbo's district. There is, however, a small issue of return on investment that one might wish to consider.

David M. makes a very good point. However, though I'm not at West Waxahatchie V., I am at a small flagship campus in a poor state, and an earmark sometimes helps us in our struggle to improve research activity and bolster said state's economy. This is not to disagree with David, only to note that calculating the real rate of return on investment can get pretty complicated.

If you read David Stockman's book The Triumph of Politics it's clear that pretty much all of the savings that could be squeezed out of the federal budget were squeezed out in 1981. The savings achieved since then have been largely smoke and mirrors or programs that Republicans have wanted to cut anyway, whether they sae money or not.

If anyone wants to really cut pork and save the taxpayers' money, we can begin by cutting the military budget (notice, I refuse to refer to it by the misleading term "defense budget") by $200 billion a year.

Also, we can end this fiasco in Iraq. That should save us another $50 to $100 billion a year.

But of course, these things will never happen in the USA circa the first decade of the 21st century. And for me to even suggest them puts me way outside of the box . . . although my suggestions are exactly what the U.S. and the rest of the world need.

Gut the military industrial complex and see how much pork and taxpayer money is saved.

Earmarks allow Congresscritters to make spending decisions based on political decisions - as opposed to leaving the money to be spent at the discretion of "Loyal Bushies" who will spend the money as directed by Karl Rove...

Even worthy earmarks are bad government. Whether there are bigger problems is an unrelated issue. It's not as if people that want to fight pork don't know that Iraq is going on.

This post was full of strawman arguments. What's your real agenda against Porkbusters?

I agree with the above comment. There was recently a New York Times story about all these faith-based earmarks! It's not just pork, it's patrongage, vote buying, and some of the spent money may well be doing things we do not want to do. It's not just about the money.

But the pork!

Reasons to get rid of pork:

1. (as above) It is a form of political corruption that enforces party discipline.

2. Anti corruption measures, such as lobbying regulation, designed to combat pork may clean government in other ways.

3. Pork isn't that small. Big ticket pork includes farm subsidies and much military procurement.

4. If Ponnuru is for it, it's probably bad for America.

"David M. makes a very good point. However, though I'm not at West Waxahatchie V., I am at a small flagship campus in a poor state, and an earmark sometimes helps us in our struggle to improve research activity and bolster said state's economy. This is not to disagree with David, only to note that calculating the real rate of return on investment can get pretty complicated."

Yeah, who says some fat ass at Columbia is a good target for tax largesse?

People who think that the Iraq war is a good use of scarce resources should make clear the commensurate sacrifices they're willing to make, rather than hiding behind the transparent fiction that cutting "pork" can compensate.

What a complete straw man argument.

Tellingly, Scott Lemieux doesn't provide a single example of someone who argues that cutting pork can "compensate" for the entire cost of the war. And that's because nobody makes that argument.

If all Scott Lemieux can attack is made-up boogeymen, as he does here, it really shows the emptiness of the left these days.

"3. Pork isn't that small. Big ticket pork includes farm subsidies and much military procurement."

Expanding the definition of "pork" or "earmarks" to encompass "any spending I don't like" renders such terms meaningless.

In this context, pork or an earmark is money directed by a member or members of Congress--either through direct language or through rigging of a dummy competition or bidding process--to a specific entity, not a class of entities. Farm subsidies may be a waste of money and politically motivated, but that doesn't make them an earmark.

Military procurement might fit the bill in many instances, depending on how rigged a particular bidding process is and how much Congress had to do with rigging it. Sure, the executive branch rigs lots of competitions and throws lots of money away, but classifying that type of largesse in the same category as Congressional earmarks is a pointless exercise--they're two different issues requiring different solutions.

I'm all for earmark reform. I wouldn't care if they were done away with entirely, because they ARE bad government and they present serious ethics issues. But Ponnoru/Lemieux are right--they're trivial in terms of the larger budget picture. We can't just change the definition of "earmark" to make that fact go away.

I can't help but chuckle that Al takes a moment here to bash "the left" in what is likely to be the one story on Tapped which has ever said one single nice thing about Ramesh Ponnuru.

But, speaking of straw men, I notice that the between Scott's version and yours, Al, there seems to be a slight edit: you added the word "entire," as in, "the entire cost of the war". Any reason for that?

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