Regarding “accountability” one group (lobbyists) are compensated and the other is not (a novel approach). Accountability and transparency regarding the panelists depends on you. The Citizen’s Oversight Panel (COP) is in part obligated to police the appropriations requests on your behalf, and you retain the right to review all submissions. Log on to Jackie Speier’s website, download each presentation, and put the time into reviewing them just like COP is doing. You can then express your opinion on the website. If you don’t take the time to do the homework, then you have your answers.

Wouldn’t our time and energy be best spent focusing on reducing spending in these areas?

Mr. Lessig answered that, and I echo it… “But because [earmarks] feed the system of corruption that is the way Washington works. They are the cornerstone of a system feeding the worst of the lobbying mafia…” that’s why we need to kill earmarks as they exist.

I disagree with Mr. Lessig that forming Member appointed ‘citizen panels’ to replace lobbyists will improve the situation. The cancer is a lack of accountability, and there is little accountability in the citizens’ panel approach. Why will citizens’ panels be any more accountable or transparent than K street lobbyists? Why will they make better decisions? Collect globally, spend locally isn’t an especially good recipe for fiscal sanity. It sounds like a recipe for Congressional sinecures in an age of seniority, with long-lived Members bringing home other peoples’ bacon to distribute to pet projects of the Citizens’ Council (which was, after all, appointed by the same Member). If you have a local project, fund it with local funds. If you have a project that needs national support, then you need to put it in competition with all the other national priorities.

Quite frankly, I want my elected representation to heed the will of the people who elected them–not to appoint committees to give them advice. And while I understand the link between campaign donations and some earmarks, I’m curious which earmarks you would cut and which you would leave behind. And why.

$7.7 billion dollars in earmarks represents less than 2% of a $410 billion dollar spending bill. The vast majority of the money spent by the federal government is spent on defense, debt service, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget Wouldn’t our time and energy be best spent focusing on reducing spending in these areas?

For example, there are many defense programs that are not classified as earmarks while they appear to have political motivations. Wikipedia reports the development costs of the F-22 to be $65 billion dollars. Do we need this program when we are also developing the Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) for $40 billion?