It is important, however, to distinguish extravagant boondoggles from useful projects of much smaller scale. There are often worthy local undertakings whose needs might be more efficiently addressed by an amendment inserted in an appropriations bill that must be passed than to go through the process of writing grant proposals that must go through several layers of bureaucracy and may not receive funding: a grant to a Civil Air Patrol unit to support its search and rescue mission, money for a commemorative project in a local library, or funds for a new ambulance for a rural medical emergency unit would be typical of the projects supported.
We have to ask whether strengthening the hands of party leadership and the House and Senate appropriations committees by endowing them with the power to grant these favors strengthens the institution of Congress. I think it does.
Earmarks are not budget busters. They involve no new appropriations. Rather, they tap existing pots of money and merely redirect them to projects deemed worthy by members of Congress rather than distributed by formulas over which members have no control.
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