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rulemylife -> FACT check: Ban on earmarks is mostly symbolic (11/19/2010 4:42:07 PM)
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Fact check: Ban on earmarks is mostly symbolic
WASHINGTON – Despite their claims, the Republicans' ban on earmarks won't stop lawmakers from steering taxpayers' dollars to pet projects.
And it will have little if any effect on Washington's far graver problem — the gigantic budget deficit.
Saying Election Day victories gave them a mandate to curb spending, Republicans formally agreed last week to a two-year prohibition of earmarks, legislative provisions that funnel money to lawmakers' favorite projects.
....Even completely eliminating earmarks would hardly ensure that spending decisions will be objective and divorced from politics. Presidents and agency officials control where many federal dollars go and have always used that power to reward allies. And formulas that automatically disburse other funds to states are themselves products of past political compromises, with their own sets of winners and losers.
"It makes those who ranted and raved against earmarks feel good," Robert Reischauer, the Urban Institute president and former chief of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said of the GOP ban. "But it is largely cosmetic."
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