• $2.2
  billion the amount Senator Tom Coburn – the guy who held up the food safety bill – says Senate leaders are putting aside in earmarks; Politico dug these numbers out of his database
• $1.1 
  trillion the size of the total omnibus spending bill the Democrats are trying to push through; just pointing out for comparison’s sake, because it’s good to note source

• » OK, Tom, you’ve made your point: Democratic and Republican leaders alike in the Senate are taking a lot of federal money and giving it to the states. But you’re trying to deceive us. Here’s why; see, a trillion dollars is a thousand billion by our last count. And Tom, who’s anti-earmark, is pointing out how wrong it is for Senate leaders to throw roughly two-thousandths of the entire spending bill back to the states, $2.2 billion which would get spent by the federal government otherwise. (The total amount, $8.3 billion, is still absurdly tiny in comparison to the entire spending bill.) To put it another way, Tommy Boy’s trying to make hay out of an issue that’s actually needle-sized. You know what the real problem is? The hay. Not the needle. (And in case you’re wondering, these earmarks were made earlier this year, before the current anti-earmark vibe hit.)

Posted by Ernie Smith • Permalink