So Many Earmarks, So Little Time

The 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Bill bundles spending for six departments - Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, State and Veterans Affairs - into one Brobdingnagian pile of paper that makes it hard to figure out earmarks.

The diligent folks over at Taxpayers for Common Sense went through the bill (they must have a severe case of eyestrain) and determined it contains 5,224 earmarks valued at just less than $4 billion, which amounts to some serious money.

I certainly cannot go through a thousand earmarks, let alone 5,224, but I did check out a few in my favorite categories -- those that I call critters and kids earmarks.

So, this year the taxpayers will fork out $200,000 for lobster research and another $300,000 for herring research in Maine, and an even $1 million for scallop fisheries assessment in Massachusetts. I love seals -- I have a toy seal on my bookcase -- but I don't know why I have to pick up part of the $300,000 tab for seal and sea lion research in Alaska.

I'm all for after school activities for kids but have a hard time figuring out why the Green Bay, Wis., YWCA deserves $100,000 for its after-school when most other after-school programs in the nation aren't getting a cent. I'm also a jazz aficionado, but I can't get behind why "Jazz at Lincoln Center" deserves an $800,000 earmark for music education.

And next week, it will only get worse as Congress fine tunes the Defense Department appropriations bill, which Taxpayers for Common Sense calls the "the big earmark enchilada."