The Washington PostWe're in the middle of simultaneous wars against terrorism and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the outcomes are anything but certain. To help fight these wars, Congress passed a gigantic $416 billion appropriations bill for the Defense Department in July; President Bush signed it into law on Aug. 5. The measure, the president declared, ensures that "our armed forces have every tool they need to meet and defeat the threats of our time." ..
By the time Congress had finished with the bill in July, House and Senate members had added more than 2,000 of these "earmarks." Some items had at least a tenuous relevance to defense, but many didn't. None, though, had been included in the defense budget put together by the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget, and there was subsequently little, if any, objective evaluation of their cost and efficacy.
Nonetheless,
Congress was content; there's a record-setting $8.9 billion in pork to impress the voters back home, and no one is the wiser about what is really being done to "raise and support armies" and "provide and maintain a navy" -- or not.