FRANK RICH HELPS OUT THE RADIO GASBAGS

The gasbags have been harping on the evils of Congressional earmarks and in this column Frank Rich joins the chorus:

A few heretics excepted, they hope to blame all their woes on their unpopular president, the inept McCain campaign and their party’s latent greed for budget-busting earmarks.

Compared to the Federal budget, earmarks are tiny and as Atrios has pointed out, many of them may fund worthwhile projects. The WSJ provides some context to the earmark hysteria:

First, three different counts of earmarks — two from anti-earmark organizations and one from the federal government — corroborate Obama’s claim that they total just $18 billion, dwarfed by a federal budget in the $3 trillion range Each of the counts, though, comes up with slightly different numbers for 2008: $18.3 billion , according to Taxpayers for Common Sense; $17.2 billion, says Citizens Against Government Waste; and $16.9 billion, according to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.