CHANGE: GOP Anti-Appropriators Break Up The Spending Party. “A third difference: the earmark ban. Short of kicking members off the committee, the chairman used to use earmarks — the promise of more pork or the threat to strip existing pork — to enforce loyalty from other appropriators. That’s why Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., calls earmarks ‘the gateway drug to a spending addiction,’ and it’s why banning them could save taxpayers much more than a more simplistic accounting would suggest.” Gee, who could have predicted that?