Excuse me, amigo. I completely supporty your position against earmarks as a bad way to allocate funds, and against lobbyists, as a bad way to represent the public interest to its representatives, believe me.

But just to keep things in perspective, you are poking at a budget item that represents, if memory serves, a per cent or so of the total budget, while completely ignoring the really big items that cause hemorrhaging, such as defense overspends and the close-knit no-bid contracts with huge firms beloved by the Bushites such as Blackwater, L-3 Communications/Titan, and Cheney's own special relationship, Haliburton.

Your friends in the Administration have run up a deficit of ~$500B.

The Federal budget is on the order of ~$3T (trillion) dollars.

Your high-finance amigos have gone to Washington demanding the taxpayers commit to ~$700B in a bailout program.

Mister Bush's brilliant war has run up a price tag around $580 billion and counting.

The total of all Republican And Democratic earmarks (including the Bridge/Road Across Nowhere)? Around $18B.

Just to keep things in perspective, as I was saying.