April 13, 2007

Senate Strips Bill of Single Earmark

By JEFFREY BRAINARD

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