What does "earmarks and pork-barrel spending" mean?

Question

What does "earmarks and pork-barrel spending" mean?

Answer 1

They're pretty much the same.  They're little projects that politicians insert into bills that set aside government money to fund some pet project in the district or state that they represent.

Answer 2

Those are polite terms for "corruption".

Basically, politicians insert additional spending into normal legislative bills. Basically, what happens is that a politician spends our (the taxpayer) money on something that benefits his constitutents (voters) or a campaign donor, in order to buy votes or as quid pro quo for services or money rendered.

The politicians also use it to build monuments to themselves using our money. West Virginia, for example, has hundreds of things named after Robert Byrd, which were all paid for by us taxpayers. It's disgusting, dishonest and utterly corrupt.

Which is why the Democrat Congress made rule changes so they could hide these better from public scrutiny.