Prof. Bainbridge points us to the WSJ:
President Bush could also do more. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint notes that the Congressional Research Service has found that 95% of recent earmarks were slipped into committee reports and not written into law. “These non-legislated earmarks are not legally binding,” he says. “President Bush could ignore them. He doesn’t need a line-item veto.”
The federal government is now an astounding 185 times as big in real terms as it was a century ago.
Voting will not cure this disease. Neither will reform nor a third party in power. The “lawmakers” aren’t even bothering to pretend that their actions are legal anymore. Pillaging the public coffers is not exactly a new phenomenon, but such brazen pillager-politicians is yet another indication that a final collapse into Caesarism of one form or another is in the cards.