Looks like we’re going to lose a couple of the senators whose claim to fame is getting ridiculous amounts of money for their home states – in other words, earmarks.  And the two senators in question have been around long enough to where they may well have invented the “earmark”.  Who are these 2 senators, you ask?  How do the names Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd grab ya? 

The pair have been the face of the committee that controls over $1 trillion a year in spending on everything from A to Z; combined, they have 90 years of service between them.  But just because Stevens and Byrd are leaving doesn’t mean that earmarks are leaving with them – not by a long shot.  Ironically, another member of the same committee who is retiring, Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico, says that “earmarks won’t be abandoned” and “They’re needed.”

For now, it looks like Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii will replace Byrd and either Senator Lisa Murkowski or Mark Begich – who recently defeated Stevens in the Alaska senatorial race – will replace Stevens.  The only hope that’s out there as far as the reductions in earmarks is oddly enough…president-elect Barack Obama.  Obama made a campaign promise that, according to his campaign website said that a “plan for restoring fiscal discipline” that partially says he will slash earmarks “to no greater than 1994 levels and all spending decisions are open to the public.”

Quite honestly, I do not see Obama keeping that promise if his other campaign promises are weighed equally.  What one can hope for right now is that the Republicans currently in the committee bring some financial common sense to the earmark situation; it is also not lost upon me that the Democrats view the earmarks are some source of “entitlement” and that the amount of earmarks they get for their home states help them prove to their constituents the type of senator that they are.