Earmarks?�?� What earmarks...

From USA Today:

Half of 'earmark' spending untouched in GOP bills
House Republicans who crafted two short-term spending bills made $5.3 billion in cuts by going after some of Washington's least popular spending: those congressional pet projects known as "earmarks."

Even so, a congressional report shows they left $4.8 billion in earmarks untouched � and critics of congressional pork say they should go after it.

"Many in Congress promised taxpayers a full earmark moratorium, not a half moratorium," says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., an earmark opponent who requested the report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. "Protecting nearly $5 billion in earmarks from cuts sends the wrong message to taxpayers."

And these earmarks:

Among the projects in the 2010 defense bill which could continue to receive funding: $31.5 million for the C.W. Bill Young Bone Marrow Donor Recruitment and Research Program, named for the Republican congressman from Florida; $20 million for the World War II Museum in New Orleans, sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and David Vitter, R-La.; and $18.9 million for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, sponsored by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

All good projects I am sure but we cannot afford them! It is plain and simple -- we do not have the money to pay for them so they need to be defunded. So sad, too bad but they should never have been funded in the first place and the people who voted them into existence need to have their collective pee-pee's whacked with a ruler...