If you are going to clean out a refrigerator, you start with the part that smells. In Washington, it’s pork, not in the frig, but on Capitol Hill. This pork, otherwise known as an “earmark,” is a project that is slipped into a bill by a lawmaker that circumvents the merit-based or competitive process and serves a narrow or special interest.
An infamous one that shows up almost every year is “wood utilization research.” We’re spending $4,841,000 on new ways to use wood (trees) this year. Has anyone heard of paper bags? I’ll give it to you for free and you can save taxpayers $4.8 million. That’s a perfectly good use for wood. However, many cities now are trying to ban paper bags in order to save trees! The irony of it all!
These projects add up. Citizens Against Government Waste has documented 109,952 of them worth $307.8 billion since 1991. Continue reading “What’s that smell coming from D.C.?”