Thought
Technically, earmarks are not spending in the budget. Technically, they are the forced allocation of already appropriated monies within budget line items towards designated projects.
posted by mikevotes at
7:53 AM
2 Comments:
I didn't know that. So you're saying even if you eliminated all the earmarks in the omnibus bill, the bill wouldn't have saved a single dollar in appropriations?
By
-epm, at 9:49 AM
Technically, yes.
Technically, they are mandates for spending assigned to a particular budget line item. The Dept of the Interior is budgeted however million dollars, but later in the bill is a requirement that x amount is to be spent on the earmark.
Sometimes the earmarks come with a consummate boost in the departmental budgets like $12,000,114 for dept x, and then in a separate section of the bill there's a provision mandating department x to spend $114 for whatever project.
But most of the time, they're just spending mandates forced on the already existing budget lines.
However, if we got rid of them, the departments could (in theory) trim their submitted budgets.
By
mikevotes, at 10:41 AM
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