Earmark by any other name still an earmark

An internecine debate on the future of the current earmark moratorium is heating up in the Senate and House GOP conferences, and in the process an obscure legislative tool is slowly coming out of the shadows as a potential alternative to “Bridge to Nowhere” spending measures.

Miscellaneous Tariff Bills (MTBs) are provisions written by House and Senate members to suspend temporarily U.S. trade duties on specific products. The suspensions usually are for periods of three to five years, but there is no bar to longer suspensions being enacted.