Schumer, Clinton Earmark Funds For Contributors

The New York Sun reports:

Senators Clinton and Schumer are asking the Pentagon to spend $123 million of its wartime budget for New York projects that the Department of Defense didn't ask for - but that in many cases are linked to the senators' campaign contributors.

The two Democratic senators announced the projects - from a genomics research project at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan to cancer research on Long Island - in press releases this month, touting the impact they would have on the state economy.

But former Pentagon officials and Senator McCain say that the increasing number of "earmarks," as the projects are known, in the federal budget often divert money that would be better spent by the Defense Department's normal competitive bidding process. The number of pork barrel projects, including earmarks, has soared to 13,997 in 2005, from 1,439 in 1995, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, which tracks earmarks.

Clinton and Schumer for even bigger defense spending than the Defense Department wants.The warfare state is the welfare state.