Billions in earmarks good place to start cuts

Billions in earmarks good place to start cuts

Sen. Tom Harkin has obviously been in Washington, D.C., too long. In his defense of “earmarks,” he casually points out that it is less than 1 percent of the total budget. It is an insignificant “red herring” to his stated way of viewing the $131 billion worth of earmark requests for the 2011 budget.

I suppose after many years of ever larger deficit numbers, $131 billion seems a small number to a sophisticated politician like Harkin. To those of us paying the taxes and to our children and grandchildren who will have to deal with the ever-growing deficit, it would be a good place to start cutting reckless federal spending. Perhaps Harkin could lead a mail-in donation program to raise the $120 million he proposes to fund protection for endangered species along the Missouri.

I applaud Sen. Chuck Grassley for his understanding that the majority of us want the overspending to stop. Elimination of earmarks would be a small but important first step. If Congress and our senators feel their earmarks are important they should be submitted as separate bills and voted on by the House and Senate as separate budget items. The argument that the current earmarks system is how things are done in Washington isn't going to wash in the next election.

Albert Cram

Iowa City