Amnesty - the other white meat?

What happens if you do not use your earmarks? Nothing according to TDOT. I asked this question as a result of learning that the money available for transportation earmarks was a proportion of the estimated amount that the state would receive anyway. These earmarks are nothing more than mad money that does not have to go through the difficult Pay-Go rules because their source is already secured. So when Senator McCain failed to designate earmarks, he simple let the Arizona Department of Highways decide priorities for the money.

I don't doubt that Senators and Congressmen think that they can play highway engineer better than the Tennessee Legislature. There is no proof that they do any better than a random guess anyway. But, if they wanted to, TDOT could make better financial and transportation related decisions with a scarce commodity than any congressman or senator simply because TDOT has the staff for such operations. The reason I know they have the staff is because, according to what they spend on administration versus other highway departments, about 90% of highway departments spend less on administrative costs than Tennessee. This is from a study that is almost three years old now.