Bring Back Earmarks? Yes/No‪?‬ Adam Radly

Congress has decided to resume using earmarks. It was always known as "pork" or "pork-barrel spending". The reason it was known by those names is that it involved spending taxpayer money on small, low-priority projects that only matter to one politician. Why was it used in the first place? Why was it eliminated? And why has it made a comeback? 

If you could vote directly on this policy to resume using earmarks in Congress, would you vote for it or against it? 

So what is an earmark? According to this article from CNN:

"Member-directed spending" is just a fancy name for earmarks -- a system by which federal spending in a certain district or state can be appended to legislation as a sweetener for the members of Congress representing those areas.

"Earmarks had long been part of the legislative process as a way to grease the wheel of bill-passing."

"How did it "grease the wheel of bill passing"?  In simple terms, if a particular politician didn't want to vote for a bill, they could be convinced to change their minds by including some additional funding for some small project in their jurisdiction. How and when did this start to change?"

"But beginning in earnest with Arizona Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign for president, earmarking began to be regarded as a bad thing. McCain was a longtime opponent of earmarks -- known derisively as "pork" to Beltway insiders -- and would regularly call out what he believed to be over-the-top pet projects inserted into bills by lawmakers."

McCain made a big deal out of in his run for President. That's when everybody outside of politics became aware of it and they didn't like it.

Check out the listing for this topic on the One Democracy platform:

https://onedirectdemocracy.com/policy-listings/how-can-we-improve-the-rules-for-the-use-of-earmarks/



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