While flagging big cuts to future school spending growth, the Coalition's first budget earmarks the funding over five years to continue the chaplaincy scheme originally put into place by John Howard.
The Senate ethics committee hounded him absurdly for the "conflict of interest" of delivering babies back home in Oklahoma in his spare time, though he charged only enough to cover his expenses.Partly as a result of Mr Coburn's efforts, congressional earmarks were prohibited in 2010.
The contributions, they maintained, had nothing to do with the earmarks.
But in truth, the district had been in a form of mourning since 2010: a year that saw a ban on the "earmarks" that enabled Mr Young to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to his district and state.Dry numbers cannot convey the Babylonian scope of his works.
Yet both men trenchantly defended Mr Young's earmarks, calling them money "coming back to the district".
THE European Union earmarks about €30 billion ($35 billion) each year for payments to its poorer regions, in the hope of helping them get richer.
Jim DeMint, a senator from South Carolina, wants his colleagues to adopt a voluntary ban on earmarks, a form of pork-barrel spending particularly reviled by fiscal hawks.
The number of congressional "earmarks" for projects in members' districts increased from 1,300 in 1994, when the Republicans took over Congress, to 14,000 in 2005.The Republican majority also cheered Mr Bush all the way to Baghdad.
I nominate Starbucks.Unlike me, a large number of people seem to think that earmarks are evil, and evidence of moral turpitude on the part of the politician involved.
He is a budget hawk who has done more than any other senator to crusade against "earmarks", pork-barrel spending and the lobbying industry, and who voted against Mr Bush's bloated highway bill and his irresponsible prescription-drugs benefit.
His budget also earmarks $52m to allow children trapped in the worst schools to move to better public schools or private schools.Why has California become obsessed with education?
