Earmarks, frankly, cost us too much

The Daily Herald covered President Obama's retreat on his campaign promise to eliminate pet projects known as "earmarks." Despite his good intentions, the President hit a brick wall put up by Democrats who treasure their right to send taxpayer money to their districts for park improvements, university research grants, equipment for police departments and redevelopment projects.

President Bush, who also opposed earmarking, received the same reception from his Republican leadership. Harry Reid best summarized it: "I'm here to tell everyone that we have an obligation as members of Congress to help direct spending to our states".

Therein lies the rub! Our elected officials in Washington think they are doing us a favor. A good example of this fallacy surfaced recently when Palatine received a grant for hundreds of thousand of dollars to cover the cost of hiring six more firemen. It seems that the grant provided 80% the first year with lesser percentages in succeeding years. In year five, Palatine had to pick up the entire cost. I use this as example to illustrate three things;

1) The project undoubtedly would never pass a reasonable cost-benefit analysis.

2) It will cost the Palatine taxpayers continuing dollars unless they eliminate the extra firemen after a couple of years.

3) You can bet that a lot of the money is lost in transferring the dollars to Washington and then back to the states. Minnesota's governor recently reported that they get back 73 cents for every dollar they send to Washington.

We might ask ourselves why then does this Washington obsession with earmarks prevail? They perceive we citizens are eternally grateful for getting more money then our unfortunate neighbors because our representatives are more influential. It is high time we tell our representatives to allocate money wisely for the entire country. The end result will be a better and more prosperous America.

Richard R. Kaiser

Elk Grove Village