BTP readers will remember Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank as the person who tried to convince readers that Social Security will be bankrupted by the baby boomers. He's back this week trying to confuse people about where their tax dollars are going. Milbank has an article highlighting the courage of Senator Tom Coburn, who has decided to target $400 million worth of earmarked spending. Mr. Milbank thinks that going after such spending is the height of political courage. I am no fan of earmarks, but if Mr. Milbank was serious about informing readers he would describe the appropriations in question in contexts that would make them meaningful to readers. So cutting the $500,000 earmark for the "Virtual Herbarium" in New York would reduce spending by 0.00002 percent. If the brave senator succeeds in his effort the savings will amount to 0.2 cents per person. Cutting the $100,000 in funding for the celebration of Lake Champlain's quadricentennial will reduce the budget by 0.000003 percent, saving taxpayers 0.03 cents per person. And the elimination of the $50,000 for an ice center in Utah will cut the budget by 0.000002 percent and save taxpayers 0.02 cents per person. In fact, Mr. Coburn's whole list of earmarks amounts to 0.013 percent of federal spending or $1.34 cents per person. Put another way, it's equal to what we are currently spending every 19 hours on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senator Coburn is of course free to place his priorities wherever he likes. And, Mr. Milbank certainly is free to champion the senator's efforts. But, he does have an obligation to inform, rather than mislead, his readers. It is unlikely that many readers of his column recognize how completely inconsequential these earmarks are relative to the size of the budget, the budget deficit, or family tax bills. This could have been easily remedied if Milbank had put these numbers in a context that would make their importance clear to readers.
--Dean Baker
