A friend on the Hill e-mails:

Those “earmarks” (none of them are spending, they are all tax relief) are not part of the underlying economic recovery bill; they’re part of the tax relief bill that will be attached to the economic rescue bill. The same tax relief bill, by the way, that the Senate passed 93-2 (two Democrats, Carper and Conrad, were the only ‘no’ votes) a couple weeks ago with the same, exact provisions and that the House refused to take up because it didn’t raise taxes to “pay for” the tax relief. Here’s the Senate roll call. Also, those provisions, while providing tax relief, have not been defined as fitting the guidelines of a “limited tax benefit.” And I don’t recall a single person objecting to the bill or defining any earmarks in the bill when it passed the Senate with the vote of every Republican (and all but two Democrats) that was present for the vote.