Last week, a commenter on my post about sewer projects in the House Interior Appropriations Bill defended an earmark for a “Northeastern Illinois Sewer Improvement Consortium for Sewer Improvement” by claiming it was a worthwhile project. I won’t get into the merits of the Sewer Consortium, but it’s the kind of argument that you often hear from defenders of earmarks. Indeed, most earmarks aren’t Indoor Rainforests (although some are) and sound like perfectly reasonable spending projects.

“Sound like” is the key phrase there. On top of a number of problems with earmarks on a philosophical and constitutional level (which I outlined in my response to the commenter), earmarks also leave the system open to corruption and Congressmen bribing us with our own money.

Well, now it looks like Representative Chaka Fattah (D-PA) might have just proved my point. According to Americans for Prosperity, the Congressman is married to a trustee of the Philadelphia Art Museum, which is slated to receive a $100,000 earmark from Fattah in the aforementioned Interior Bill. In addition to his wife’s position as a trustee of the museum, members of the museum board have donated thousands of dollars to Fattah’s reelection campaigns.

Representative Jeff Flake offered an amendment to kill the earmark this morning (along with four other projects). Unsurprisingly, each amendment failed on a voice vote.

UPDATE: Republicans get in on the fun as Jerry Lewis (R-CA) secures a $500,000 earmark to "beautify" a metro stop a few blocks from his million-dollar home according to Americans for Prosperity.