"You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours," is an old and cherished maxim of our republic. In politics, that's called an earmark, aka pork. One member of Congress gets a road or a monument for his or her state in exchange for a vote on the bill in question.
Congress has lived on this since the era of stovepipe hats. The political vogue lately, however, has been to repudiate those earmarks. But with the recent gridlock in Washington, the feeling is that perhaps some of that grease might help ease things.
Long before President Clinton, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and President Obama, to name just a few, opposed earmarks, former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., remembers hearing about them in the 1960s, when his father Milward Simpson was in the Senate.
"[Lyndon Johnson] came up to Pop one time and said, 'Milward, what can I do for you? I need your vote ... surely you must have a dam or something out there you need in Wyoming,'" Simpson tells Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered. "I'm not talking about purity; I'm just talking about reality."
“ We cannot handle too much more of the situation we currently face where ... legislation can only get through when it is done at the last hour.