I believe that I HEARD Obama say that he was going to end ALL earmarks.
At the time I thought that statements didn't make much sense.
Earmarks are a SOP for funding specific projects.
Why on earth would you want to end that?
PORK is probably always an earmark, but not every earmark is pork.
duh!
If it's a good program, it can be voted on and passed on it's own merit and need not be inserted into another bill as an earmark.
So on top of the other spending for the stimulus package...that would be the 99% of it which is NOT considered an earmark, you really expected congress to pass 9,000 individual bills, too?
From Wikipedia:
Earmarking differs from the broader appropriations process, defined in the Constitution, in which Congress grants a yearly lump sum of money to a Federal agency. These monies are allocated by the agency according to its legal authority and internal budgeting process. With an earmark, Congress has given itself the ability to direct a specified amount of money from an agency's budget to be spent on a particular project, without the Members of the Congress having to identify themselves or the project.
Yeah, that's right.
So?