No More Earmarks , he said.

How earmarks increase spending on just one budget request:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092803862.html

Cochran says his proposals are based only on "national security interests," not campaign cash. But in providing money for projects that the Defense Department says it did not request and does not want, he has joined a host of other senators on both sides of the aisle. The proposed $636 billion Senate bill includes $2.65 billion in earmarks.

President Obama has repeatedly promised to fight "the special interests, contractors and entrenched lobbyists" that he says have distorted military priorities and bloated appropriations in the past. In August, he told a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that "if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it."

But the White House instead sent a generally supportive message to the Senate about the pending defense bill on Friday, virtually ensuring that the earmarks will win final congressional approval.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113333277

President Obama has promised to clean up the so-called earmarking process that allows lawmakers to insert pet projects into government spending bills. Despite the president's call for change, the defense bill that's making its way through the Senate still sets aside billions of dollars for projects the military says it doesn't need.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2009/sep/defense-bill-loaded-earmarks

Although President Obama has repeatedly vowed to battle the special interests that severely inflated military spending in the past, he supports a proposed defense bill that contains billions in earmarks for projects the Pentagon did not request and does not want.

The $2.6 billion in earmarks will fund highly questionable projects that will largely benefit the financial supporters of the lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, who will vote for the massive $636 billion spending bill. The president’s support practically guarantees that the earmarks will get final congressional approval, according to the newspaper that broke the story this week.

SNIP

The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hawaii Democrat Daniel Inouye, added 37 earmarks of his own worth $208 million. Nearly $70 million will go to entities that donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign, including a Hawaiian healthcare network ($24 million) and Boeing’s operation of the Maui Space Surveillance System ($20 million). Twenty million will go to a civic center named after the late Senator Ted Kennedy, a project that doesn’t seem to justify military spending.

 

An explanation of how earmarks increase spending that even a child could understand:



http://www.heritage.org/Research/budget/wm2318.cfm

And by diverting transportation dollars into projects that are often frivolous and having nothing to do with reducing congestion or improving mobility, earmarks starve higher-priorities like road maintenance and construction, which in turn forces Congress to increase spending to replenish that funding.