Lew Rockwell Defends Earmarks
Lew Rockwell doesn't seem to understand the budget process. He is a big defender of freedom, no doubt about it. His blog and the movement he has helped build deserves abundant praise. But he seems to defend earmarks merely because Ron Paul supports them.
Rockwell writes:
All the usual suspects are criticizing earmarks again. Being anti-earmark, like McCain and the Beltway types, is a way to seem anti-spending while actually strengthening executive power. Earmarks do not increase spending; they are congressional allotments of proposed spending. If money is not directed by Congressman X to the public library in Topeka, it goes to the presidency, where the federal agencies spend it. Earmarks are, in effect, a legislative blow at executive supremacy. A very minor one, it is true, but you can tell by the neocon yelps, not to mention the opposition of the Club for Growth, that earmarks are comparatively a good thing. So it is no contradiction for Ron Paul to request earmarks that his constituents want. He votes against the spending, of course, but if the earmark goes through, that's better than Bush and Cheney getting the dough for their nefarious scheme.
This argument is an old canard, that earmarks don't increase overall spending, they are merely carved out of current allocations. It's technically true, but full of smoke and mirrors. It presumes that Congress is helpless against itself. That it can't cut earmarks out of a budget and then subsequently reduce the total amount, which they are certainly capable of doing. Rockwell's line of thinking also presumes that earmarks are never used to buy off votes to pass really big spending bills that otherwise wouldn't pass the laugh test. In this application, earmark spending is a steroid that massively increases the size of government through leverage. Rockwell, a proud critic of government, certainly doesn't believe that politicians behave like kittens who don't buy each other off with earmarks, does he?
Congress could eliminate earmarks tomorrow, and not give the Administration one extra dollar. The fact that they don't do this isn't an indictment of earmarks, it's an indictment of a Congress unwilling to restrain itself.
