North Dakota's U.S. senators and representative are skilled at creating earmarks, for which they're unabashed to take credit, because the device brings many millions of dollars in federal spending to their home state.

An earmark, to put it directly, is a lawmaker's way of designating tax dollars for a purpose not included in the regular federal budget.

The system of pasting funding provisions onto appropriations or budget bills needs a critical review. If something deserves federal funding, it should be budgeted. But the process of adding on money for favored individual projects over and above the budget has become an expected part of the byplay between Congress and the president.

Sens. Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan and Rep. Earl Pomeroy are sending $133 million in North Dakota's direction in fiscal year 2008 as earmarked federal funds. Among the prime beneficiaries are the state's universities and colleges, receiving $76.3 million for research and other programs.

The three lawmakers took an emphatic part in opposing a proposed one-year moratorium on congressional members' earmarking funds for their favored projects. If not for earmarks made by the three, there would not be $3.9 million in federal money to keep the doors of United Tribes Technical College open. And that's a small amount, set beside the 17 earmarks for North Dakota State University totaling $35.7 million - that doesn't even include Dorgan's earmark of $5.9 million for NDSU's Center for Nanoscale Energy.

Higher education shouldn't be singled out, as if it were the main entity depending on earmarked money. For example, for fiscal year 2008, members of Congress settled on 2,046 earmarks just in the areas of transportation and housing and urban development, to the tune of $3.6 billion.

It's political reality that one of the reasons members of Congress seek office and re-election is to accumulate seniority, to land choice committee assignments and be chairs of committees is to further the interests of constituents back home. With Conrad as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Dorgan as a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and Pomeroy on House Ways and Means, there is clout for a state of 635,000 population.

But is that what it's supposed to be about? Granted, there's not likely ever to be a level playing field in Congress. And it would be hypocritical to sneer at earmarking and cheer when our delegation gets Bismarck State College $6.3 million by way of the process.

Maybe the most persuasive argument in favor of experimenting with a more honest, straightforward method of justifying federal government spending is this: The Congress should be looking after the interest of the country, not only home states. It would be good to be rid of the feeling that North Dakota is part of the union mainly for the purpose of being on the receiving end of other people's tax dollars.