Rep. Jim Moran, commenting on the controversy over all the earmarks (more than 8,500 of them) in the omnibus spending bill, tells the Washington Post, “The reality is that every dollar in the budget is earmarked. The question is: Who does the earmarking?”

Indeed. We have disclosure about $100,000 here, $500,000 there, $5,000,000 there — telling us which member directed what spending where via earmark. But about the big ticket items, the decreases or increases in agency budgets, the large new initiatives–we know nothing beyond the name of the bill sponsor (who may or may not have very much to do with individual provisions). More transparency about bill authorship would b