T he polite term on Capitol Hill is "earmarking." But whether one calls it earmarking or pork barrel, it is a reprehensible activity practiced by a few powerful members of Congress. Moreover, it has reached a point where the negative impact on scientific projects is very real, as is apparent from the following excerpt of recent remarks by George Brown, chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. "Mr. Speaker...I want...to comment on the.. .practice of adding unauthorized,

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... equested earmarks for personal interest items. "This, of course, is in many ways a time-honored tradition of this body and could be overlooked ifit were not for the severe budgetary environment that we have had to operate within this year and for the foreseeable future. This year, the budget reductions that Congress has had to make have made it entirely inappropriate to indulge in the earmarking that we are being asked to approve. ".. .I want to take a few moments to cite a few examples and explain why I believe this practice has simply gone too far. "In the NASA area, I am certain that my colleagues recall the debate earlier this year over the space station. That debate was, in many ways, a historic one. We were asked to make a major decision on whether we could afford to continue the space station when so many other programs were in dire need offunding. These included space science programs, housing programs, environmental programs, and veterans programs. We voted to continue the station, and there can be no doubt that many ofthese other meritorious programs have not received the funding they needed. "Yet the conference report [that is, final bill] contains over $100 million in projects that were never requested by the administration, never authorized, and never discussed on the floor. We were never given the choice between the station and these projects. These appear in the NASA portion of the budget, but some can scarcely even be called space projects. "The conferees generously set aside over $40 million for a vast variety of brick and mortar projects in West Virginia. These include $22.5 million in funding for a National Technology Transfer Center in Morgantown, WV. The proponent envisions that persons inquiring about technological advances that are taking place through government projects must write to West Virginia for the answer. It includes $7.5 million in continued funding for the Wheeling, West Virginia, Jesuit College.