McCain cited $18 billion dollars in earmarks made this last fiscal year, and how Obama had earmarked nearly $400 million himself over his short career in the Senate. Now, this does not seem like a lot of money, especially in light of the $700 billion bailout package being debated in Congress, or the trillions of dollars of debt our nation is in. Obama tried to minimize the $18 billion, and I think to an extent he succeeded in diverting McCain’s message about the wasteful spending in earmarks. But McCain did get a parting shot in: “Maybe $18 billion isn’t a lot of money to Senator Obama…”
In the issue of earmarks, McCain is absolutely right. One of most important means of reining reckless government spending is to clamp down on earmarks. True, taking care of earmarks won’t necessarily solve the overall problem, but it takes care of certain interior dispositions that makes reckless spending so easy.
Earmarking is a temptation. Right now, Congressmen can slip in a few hundred thousand here, a couple million there, attaching those dollars to bills that need not have anything to do with the earmark itself. Passing an amendment to remove those earmarks from the bill is not necessarily easy, especially since “everybody” slips in egregious spending from time to time. The whole “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” really is one of the strongest bipartisan efforts in our federal government. On top of that, often it becomes the case of either voting through the earmarks, or letting a good bill that would help thousands of people die.
Our Congressmen have a duty to the American people, and that is to be fiscally responsible in their legislation. They tax income, spending, savings, investments, and so on in order to fund all the government projects. While these projects can be of vital importance—such as the military and Social Security—members of Congress have a duty to make sure that their spending is within the money the government brings in.
The problem is a disconnect between Congress and the money it plays with. Congress feels it can simply throw money around, and if it runs out of money, it can issue bonds, take out loans, or print more. If necessary, it could try to raise revenue by raising taxes, though who to tax is a hotly debated issue. But with this disposition, it is very hard to have even the incentive to be fiscally responsible.
Believe it or not, but this mentality starts with earmarks. There’s a little voice that whispers to us: “it isn’t a lot of money” and “this will please our constituents” and “everybody else does it.” Oddly enough, this sounds very much like temptation that leads us into sin.
If we had to apply labels in this analogy, then we would probably say that earmarking is a venial sin. It is so small in proportion to the larger problem that surely it doesn’t constitute to grave matter. One could easily argue that earmarking pales in comparison to spending hundreds of billions of dollars wastefully in bailing out rich CEOs of failing banks that made insensible risks and now are paying the price for their lack of prudence.
Of course, one could argue that knowingly spending millions of dollars wastefully for political points could only constitute to grave matter, but I won't argue that point. For the sake of analogy, we'll claim that earmarking is a venial sin while running a deficit of trillions of dollars, mortal sin.
Labelling earmarking as venial in this situation is not dismissing it as unimportant. Venial sin is not “sin that doesn’t matter”. It does matter. Venial sin wounds God’s grace within us. Repeated venial sin makes future sin easier and easier to commit. It causes our moral integrity to decay. It makes us shut our ears to our consciences and leads us to make excuses that further lead us down the road towards serious sin. The accumulation of venial sin inevitably allows for the commission of mortal sin.
Worse, venial sin is itself a roadblock to seeking forgiveness and living a virtuous life. We could easily see the gravity and severity of our mortal sins and truly feel remorse. But when it comes to venial sins, these are the things we tend to cling to fiercely because they are such “small” sins. These are the attachments to temporal goods that have a tendency to make our repentance something less than genuine.
This is exactly what we have going on in Congress, and why McCain is right to state that earmarking is the gateway drug of reckless spending. A little bit here, a little bit there, and who cares where this money comes from, as long as it goes someplace that will help with my reelection. But this mentality builds. If we have a bill that increases government sponsored health care for families making less than $40,000 a year, why not pay a few extra billion and bump that up to $55,000 a year? If we’re drafting a bill to send $20 billion in aid to hurricane ravaged states, why not tack on a few extra billion for struggling farmers in other states? Those few extra billion aren’t all that much, and they’re for good causes, right? And before we know it, we’re running a huge deficit because we think we can keep expanding the spending, using the rationale that we’re not spending that much more on any one particular bill.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
If we want to rein in our reckless spending, we have to radically change the mindset of those who represent us in Congress. And to root out that wasteful mentality, a key component has to be the squashing of earmarks.
Getting rid of mortal sin permits God’s grace to return to our souls, but getting rid of venial sin allows our souls to grow in grace and become ever more fortified against sin. If we want our Congressmen to stop committing the mortal sin of huge budget deficits, then they must root out the venial sin of earmarking. McCain understands this. Obama does not.
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