The Importance of Hating Earmarks

Gail Collins is in high tut-tut mode over the earmark question. She makes the quite correct point that earmarked projects account for an infintessimal amount of the federal budget and are therefore very much below the concern of anyone who's "serious" about dealing with the real federal spending problems, Social Security, Medicare and the rest of the entitlement state.

Not quite, actually. Earmarks are the "broken windows" of the federal budget process. Their proliferation in recent years has been a product of, and a prod to, a general lack of seriousness about bringing the federal budget back into balance. Does anyone believe that a Congress and Administration incapable of saying no to trivialities of individual member projects will somehow acquire the career-threatening virtue necessary to reign-in the entitlement hydra? Talk about not serious. Seems to me that just as arresting turnstile jumpers and squeegee men were Guiliani's first steps toward restoring order on the streets of New York, so putting a big dent in earmarking might be the very tonic needed to reinject a modicum of seriousness in the federal budget-making process.

McCain has put his finger on a very important principle in his war against earmarks. They are a symptom and symbol of a much deeper problem in the Republic: a dwindling in the self-restraint that makes self-government possible. This is an excellent place for reform to begin.

Respond to drpotomac@gmail.com