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Argument: Focus on earmarks distracts from bigger spending issues

Issue Report: Earmarks

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Jonathan Rauch. “Earmarks Are A Model, Not A Menace”. National Journal. March 14, 2009 – “Obsessing about earmarks, indeed, has the perverse, if convenient, effect of distracting the country from its real spending problems, thus substituting indignation for discipline.

[…] These days, the problem is not so much with earmarking as with Congress’s and the public’s obsession with it. “It just takes too damn much time,” Lilly says. “Congress is spending an inordinate amount of time on 1 percent of the budget and giving the executive branch much too free a rein on the other 99 percent.”