One facet of the pork spending issue that often goes overlooked in debates is the costs inherent to government distributing hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax dollars back to us.  Those opposed to earmark reform often tell us that earmarks are a necessary method of appropriation, and that without federal earmarks many localities would suffer from bad water, untreated sewage and poorly maintained roads/bridges.

But what these people don’t tell us is the fact that the federal money being appropriated through earmarks came from our wallets and purses in the first place.  What earmarks are, essentially, is the government taking our tax dollars and then turning around and giving it back to us for a myriad of projects from bike paths to new bridges.  And in doing so, the federal government takes a big cut of all those tax dollars for the purposes of administering their collection and redistribution.

Take, for instance, this $13.4 million earmark for Massachussetts fishermen.   Whether or not it’s appropriate for government at any level to be subsidizing private industry, but what’s definitely not appropriate is the federal government’s decision to take $481,751 out of that earmark for “administering” it.  That amount, on top of the $338,249 the state of Massachusetts is taking, seems like an excessive amount of money for taxpayes to pay in order to have their own money distributed back to them.

And, if we think of this logically, wouldn’t it make more sense for the federal government to just lower taxes so that more of that money stays in the pockets of local taxpayers who could then decide, locally, if they want to spend it on bikepaths?  Or bailouts for the fishing industry?

The big lie in earmarks is that they represent helpful money sent to local projects from the federal government.  The reality is that those earmarks come from local taxpayers who must pay the federal government to not only collect it from them but also to give it back to them.