How Many American Taxpayers Does It Take to Buy an Earmark?

Forget, momentarily, that Barack Obama promised to go through the budget line-by-line to eliminate wasteful spending. Forget (also), momentarily, that he promised to "eliminate earmarks". Forget also that we're not even spending our own tax money anymore, but printing and borrowing money that our children and grandchildren will have to pay with interest.

How many tax-payers does it actually take to pay for the $7.7 billion in earmarks in the $410 billion Omnibus bill?

According to the latest IRS data (for 2004), the average American taxpayer reported income of $51,100 and paid income taxes of $9,377 or 18% of income. (Source) If we do the math, that means it takes 821,158 tax-paying Americans to pay FOR THE EARMARKS ALONE in the Omnibus bill.

How liberating, for the average American taxpayer, to know that they contributed 1/821,158th of the money needed for such illustrious and critical projects as $250,000 for "lobster research" and "lobster boat rides", $100,000 for the 'Seals as Sentinel' program, $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, $381,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center, and these are just a few.

On behalf of all Americans, thank you to our elected representatives for representing us so incredibly poorly and wasting our hard-earned tax money on crap (literally, in the case of the $1.8 million swine odor research project). Our tax money -- hard at work or hardly working? Would you ever spend your own money and resources as poorly and unwisely as you have spent ours?

Since Congress and the President clearly aren't "getting it" yet, let me spell it out for you. Americans don't mind paying taxes. We are willing to pay for our country to have a strong defense and for important infrastructure projects. We are sick of the wasteful spending and knowing full well that our tax money goes into a big black hole of nonsense once it reaches Washington. I wonder how many of us it takes to pay for Nancy Pelosi's jet? Then again, maybe I don't even want to know the answer to that one.