The Death of an Earmark

Three cheers, if not more, for Republican Senators Tom Coburn and Jon Kyl. After attempt upon attempt, Senator Coburn and Senator Kyl got the United States Senate to finally eliminate an earmark. (See here and here.) The earmark was $1,000,000 for a museum memorializing Woodstock (not the nice little town in Illinois but the 1969 music festival of the same name). The defeat will not stop the museum from opening. It is already scheduled to open next year. It just means the federal government will not be giving a gift to its backers, who already have enough money to build the museum.

While I called this an earmark, which it is (was), the problem is not "earmarks". Some earmarks are useful, and some members of Congress do not get thousands of dollars of campaign contributions after getting an earmark added to a spending bill. (Guess which Democratic candidate for President from New York got a big contribution on this one.) The problem is useless, wasteful spending. The federal government should not be giving money to rich baby boomers who want to memorialize a concert they went to almost 40 years ago. If they don’t have the money to build the museum, it shouldn’t be built.

There are things the government needs to do. But every time the government gives money to things like this, it takes money away from what it should be doing and from people it should be helping.

The problem is that when government gives, or tries to give, money to things like this, it tells me (and a lot of other people) that it has more money than it needs and that I ought to give it less.