When I worked in the Air Force budget integration shop one of my jobs was to go through the various bills and identify all the "earmarks" in it. An earmark is funding added by Congress for a specific, discrete program or activity. Once they were identified they were put aside and only spent when a variety of wickets were crossed. Many times they could not be executed in a way that was beneficial to anybody but maybe the contractor it was supposed to go to. Not surprisingly as the Federal budget has grown the number of earmarks have grown. For a good article on how one Congressman has used earmarks see:
MURTHA INC. How Lawmaker Rebuilt Hometown on Earmarks (Wall Street Journal)
Needless-to-say I am not a big fan of this way of doing business, but it was accepted within the system as it was the way to do
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