Slice the pork; Campaign against wasteful earmarking is welcome.

COLUMN: In our opinion

President Bush's vow during his State of the Union speech to fight out-of-control congressional "earmarking" provoked little reaction from pundits of polls this week. Yet, if the president reins in Congress' pork-barrel tendencies, even incrementally, he will have done the nation a valuable service.

Earmarks are the special spending measures for pet projects that often are added to major appropriations bills. Earmarks can play a positive role in the budget process because they tend to create a more level playing field between the majority and minority parties, between big states and small. However, they are prone to abuse because they circumvent the usual committee scrutiny and floor debate. Worse, although the sponsor sometimes can be identified, many earmarks appear mysteriously and anonymously as committees work on spending bills before and after the House and Senate votes.

Despite bipartisan vows last year to bring the practice under control, members of both parties have proved unable or unwilling to resist the temptation. Just last December, for example, members of Congress bundled all of the spending bills they had been dawdling over for months into a massive $550 billion package. The 1,400-page mega-bill passed in great haste - with an astonishing 9,800 earmarks - as senators and representatives of both parties rushed off for an extended Christmas break.

Mr. Bush used his address to target the excesses in two ways.

First, he said, he will veto any spending bill that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half. If he holds to that threat, the political logrolling that feeds earmarking excesses will have to be drastically curtailed.

He also targeted another form of earmarking, even more opaque, in which special spending is slipped into the explanatory reports that accompany legislation that already has been passed. Mr. Bush will use an executive order to instruct federal agencies to simply ignore spending not covered in the legislation itself.

With at least $161 billion in unanticipated economic stimulus spending already approved by the House - and the Senate contemplating add-ons that could double that amount - Mr. Bush's effort to curb wasteful earmarked spending is both timely and welcome.