Most Earmarks Null

From the Club for Growth, via Instapundit:
Congress has been earmarking most pork projects without actually writing them into law, so 95% of them are NOT LEGALLY BINDING, according to the Congressional Records Service:

The report concluded that only 543 out of 12,852 earmarks were actually written into the text of last year’s appropriations bills.

So apparently the President need not wait for Congress to restore to him the line-item veto. Senator Jim DeMint:

“This report makes the true problem of earmarks crystal clear,” said Senator DeMint. “The vast majority of earmarks are secretly slipped into bills without much debate. These non-legislated earmarks are not legally binding, and the Administration has the authority to stop them. President Bush should instruct his cabinet to ignore wasteful non-legislative earmarks and reserve the funds for their core missions. This would make it much harder for Congress to add wasteful earmarks and spend more than is truly needed.”

This is good news, though it does not reflect well on Congress. Fortunately there are some Republican legislators like DeMint who follow through.