At Saturdays debate in New Hampshire, Rick Perry hammered Ron Paul on the fact that Ron Paul requests earmarks then votes against the bill which contains them. Some of the earmarks Ron Paul has requested in FY 2011 are: "$38 million to "encourage parents to read aloud to their children", $18 million for a light rail study, $4 million for a "Trails and Sidewalks Connectivity Initiative", $11 million for an ACORN-like "Community-Based Job Training Program", $2 million for a "clean energy" pilot project, and many, many more.". Ben Domenech at Richochet has a list of other Ron Paul earmarks which include: $8 million from federal taxpayers for Recreational Fishing Piers, and $2.5 million from taxpayers for "new benches, trash receptacles, bike racks, decorative street lighting.". This only scratches the surface of Ron Paul's many earmarks, all of his earmarks can be located at his congressional website. Doug Ross notes that "Paul typically will make the earmark request, but then votes against or abstains from voting on final passage, so he can maintain his claim to have "never voted for an earmark", even the earmark requests he himself made.". Also, Ron Paul compares earmarks to the funding of weapons systems and the Iraq embassy, that comes an actual budget which will be used for something useful. Earmarks on the other hand are used to mainly to buy votes by funneling money into a Congressman's district. At the end notice how Ron Paul tries to quickly change the subject to Santorum,
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