U.S. Congress earmark ban vote on Tuesday.

Why should we ban earmarks? Remember the Bridge to Nowhere? It was a huge infrastructure project that would have cost the state of Alaska billions of dollars to maintain into the future, on its own.

That's right. That's why states are going broke. A congressman had the bright idea to get a one-time cash windfall for a huge project in his own district, but the cash for the long-term maintenance of that project is coming from where? Take a wild guess.

Okay, it will come out of the state's own coffers going forward.

That's why we need to stop all federal earmarks that don't support the long-term maintenance of projects in congressional districts, which is most likely all of them.

Yet another explanation for states going into debt.