Which came first: the Chicken or the Egg?

I ask because Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, brought it up. You see, Hoyer has supported earmarks totaling $96 million, including a $450,000 grant to the California-based InTune Foundation Group, to supposedly provide music education.

InTune officials say they aren’t sure what they are going to do with the money. The group’s director offered that, “It might be music camps. It might be lessons. It might be how to be a DJ. It might be how to create a television show.”

Last year InTune got $500,000 and failed to report what they did with the money.

Asked why he went to bat for this earmark, Hoyer replied, “I thought it was a program that would be a positive program.” Some testimonial! Of course, it couldn’t be the more than $30,000 that Hoyer’s political action committee has received from folks connected to InTune.

No, Hoyer told the Washington Post, there was no quid pro quo. He acknowledged a link between the earmarks he champions and his contributors. “If you support something . . .” Hoyer explained, “either through legislative language or verbal support or appropriated dollars, what happens is the proponents of those objectives wind up saying they want to support you. Sometimes it’s a question of which is the chicken and which is the egg.”

Of course, there’s no question that it is taxpayers who have to pay for this scrambled logic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.