Senate Strips Bill of Single Earmark

The U.S. Senate has voted, for what appears to be the first time, to strip an individual academic earmark from a spending bill: $2-million to the University of Vermont for an institute honoring former Sen. James M. Jeffords.

The money was included in a $123.2-billion appropriations measure to finance the war in Iraq. Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and a frequent critic of earmarks, took aim at the Vermont earmark as an example of what he called wasteful spending. He said

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