A logical solution for earmarks?

Finally, there may be an answer to earmark excess on Capitol Hill.

President George W. Bush had urged Congress to cut the number of earmarks by 50 percent in the 2008 budget from the pathetic tally of 13,492 in fiscal year 2007. Lawmakers didn't quite make it - the number was reduced by only 17 percent in the $555 million budget signed by Bush last week.

While the president has directed his disappointment and criticism at the Democratic majorities in Congress, everybody knows that Republican lawmakers also have a problem with earmarks. The problem actually spiraled out of control under their leadership.

But Bush may have a response to certain earmarks that would be welcome by many taxpayers.

Last week, it was reported that the administration is considering the option of simply not spending funds on earmarks that are described only in conference reports rather than in an appropriations bill itself. Conference reports have been traditionally honored, but the language in the reports is not legally binding.

This may be a refreshing new form of executive spending restraint, if applied judiciously.

The earmarks that deserve such scrutiny are those that are "air-dropped" into appropriations bills at the last minute, with their sponsors not having to defend them and their critics not having time to fight them.

These can often turn out to be the foulest forms of pork - wasteful head-scratchers designed to please narrow constituencies for political gains that just might include campaign contributions.

If Bush decides to direct federal agencies not to execute certain earmarks, there will predictably be plenty of bawling and teeth gnashing. And some of it, perhaps, will be justified.

But the sponsors of any earmark should be able to defend and justify their pet projects.

We have no idea what appropriations secured by Montana's congressional delegation might have come about through air-dropped conference reports. But if there have been any, they should be defensible.

Earlier this year, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., decried Washington spending habits, citing a Montana example in a less-than-informed manner: "We spent $3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. I'm not sure whether that is a paternity issue or a criminal issue."

That may have been a crowd-pleasing zinger in New Hampshire, where he was speaking, but we are more than confident that Montana's congressional delegation could line up dozens if not hundreds of witnesses who could defend the need for, the scientific importance of and the extreme efficiency of the unprecedented genetic research on grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

In fact, we are confident that the testimony just might change McCain's mind on the matter. If lawmakers have to defend their earmarks, then so be it.