The Club for Growth is pumped that Democrat Representative Henry Waxman has worn off earmarks.  That’s all well and good, and I certain understand where the anti-earmarks people are coming from, but in the grand scheme of things I’m not sure how much this is worth getting excited about.

In terms of injury done to our national economic situation, earmarks are a knee scrape.  Entitlements are a sucking chest wound.

While stopping shameless politicians from using our tax dollars to build civic centers and bike paths named after themselves is important, entitlements are sucking this country dry.  We spend something like $3 billion tax dollars a day on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and that spending is growing at an 8% annual rate.  We spend more on entitlements in America in one year than the entire world puts into military and war spending.  We have young, working class Americans paying exorbitant payroll taxes so that millionaire retirees can collect Social Security and cash in on free prescription drugs.

Until those problems are fixed I’ll have a hard time getting too excited about earmarks.