Earmarks were made for hypocrisy; they’re always reprehensible when they’re in someone else’s district. But despite all the Beltway hyperventilation, earmarks are not really a problem. Their exponential growth is a symptom of the larger problem of wasteful spending, but blaming the earmark process for wasteful spending is like blaming the Internet for porn. It is just a convenient delivery device, and it can have good uses as well as frivolous ones. Its abuse in recent years says more about the people misusing it than the process itself.
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