Is is politically correct to call them earmarks instead of pork barrel?

Question

So we don't offend any religious folks? Whatever happened to calling it pork barrel spending?

Shoot, one school in England removed "The Three Little Pigs" because they thought it would be offensive to muslims.

Answer 1

Because "pork barrel" spending refers to all excessive spending.

"Earmarks" has a specific meaning -- money allocated to one purpose, rather than being part of a large discretionary budget.

For example, all of the money allocated to military armor upgrades in Iraq -- those are earmarked funds. Those funds must be spent on that budget item, and cannot be used for other purposes.

Pork barrel spending, on the other hand, can come out of discretionary funding, without any earmarks assigned.

One has nothing to do with the other. Both could apply to a given spending provision, or one, or the other, or neither.

Answer 2

Why would pork barrel spending offend anyone?

Muslims don't even like pigs. They sure won't eat them. Same with the Jews.

Answer 3

Earmark is a term used to indicate that money may be spent on something.
Pork barrel/belly is a waste of the money that was earmarked for it.

Answer 4

They are called EARmarks because you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's EAR, so it combines the two terms quite neatly.

Answer 5

Pork barrel makes me think of when I would go to my grandparents' farm and they would kill hogs around Thanksgiving and take the pigskin and deep fry it in a huge black cauldron over an open flame and they would fry into rinds...excellent....