“

I think this is the real problem with earmarks, is that earmarks take the attention away from serious policymaking and take senators and member offices and turns them into essentially pork factories where much of their time, much of their limited resources is attempting to do the paperwork and investigate these organizations that they are then going to put their names behind, and all of that comes at the opportunity tradeoff from doing real policy reforms, being policy entrepreneurs and providing real leadership on the issues of the day.