And yes, the earmarks are a drop in the bucket:
According to a report this past February from Congressional Budget Office:

“If the Administration’s request for 2008 is funded in full, appropriations for military operations and other war-related activities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere in the war on terrorism will rise to $188 billion this year and to a cumulative total of $752 billion since 2001.”

Taken from,
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8971/02-11-WarCosts_Letter.pdf

So if the average earmark spending is $17 billion a year, the past six years of Earmarking is still 13% of what we’ve spent in Iraq and our War on Terror.

So, are you suggesting that because 17 billion is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the military budget that we should just let earmarks continue on at current levels?

And how much is the biggest earmark for our war in Iraq? 17 billion dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to our military budget.

I also believe we need transparency in our spending across the board in our spending.

True, but the fact remains that the entire earmark system has been corrupted and is spiraling out of control.

Last year Democrats had 12,000 earmarks that costs 17 BILLION taxpayer dollars. I would be willing to bet that a majority of the earmarks were in some way chosen through politics and campaign finance.

We need to put earmarks on hold for a year, get control of our spending, and then have a coherent debate on how to proceed with earmarks in a manner that allows for public scrutiny and open dialog.

My two…

my thoughts: their needs to be a streamlined criteria that assesses the state’s own capacity to fund a project because bottom line it is just impossible for most states to fund its infrastructure/agency and there are certain projects that have federal impacts.

For example, federally funding a study on sustainable alternatives on how to dispose disaster debris from Katrina because 1) it sets a proactive agenda to depend less on a federal clean up and 2) it brings possibility of regional jobs in the area and 3) it gets Federal liabilities off the hook for future SUPERFUND sites they have to be responsible for…

and at the end of the day we know all Earmarks are HOT-LY politically contested…i do not appreciate it when President Bush and others refer to our Katrina Recovery Appropriations Bill tied to Iraq Funding as PORK BARRELL..

Pork Barrel isn’t funding infrastructure needs to bring back the seafood industry in the Gulf, funding for Federally-supported dilapidated—-now destroyed or in the midst of demolition— Public Housing

in the face of all this Earmarking is the blurred responsibility between State and Federal gov and the disinvestment of poorer states/rich states