Another Piece of Legislation

I propose banning ALL earmark spending – at least for a given period of time while the economy regroups. I would suggest until Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are solvent. No bill can contain it! If the bill can not stand on its own – it should fail. Earmark spending is nothing but criminal spending of tax payer money.
Granted, congress will try to ignore the elimination of their “cash cow” but using public pressure detailed in “Paul’s First Week”, I believe we could bring congress to some sort of compromise.
No bill or project (pork spending would come under this heading) could even be submitted for consideration and ultimately brought to the floor for discussion until an actuary has run the numbers and calculated the cost to the taxpayers should the bill be passed. The proposed bill or project would have to explain:
1. The projected benefit of the bill
2. The projected cost of the bill
3. Where the money would come from?
4. Since a mandatory limit on overages would be imposed, in the event there are overages, where would the unauthorized overages come from so a project does not get started and stopped before completion?
5. How much and when will the funds taken for the project be returned?
6. What is the time frame for returning the funds? (Why shouldn’t it be?)
7. The actuary will be responsible for a percentage of miscalculations so actual numbers will be presented finally.
This in itself will be instrumental in lowering congressional spending as it would actually take work and due diligence to even be able to propose a bill. It will also cost the proposer of the bill or project funds to run it through the actuary. It definitely would eliminate projects like the proposed 265 million dollar Capital Visitor Center that got completed at a cost of 621 million dollars. Much of this money was ear mark spending add-ons.