This is in response to the Sun Journal editorial of Dec. 26.

U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud’s 500 earmarks suggests some interesting statistical results. If all 535 members of Congress had been equally prolific, that would produce a total of 267,500 earmark proposals for the same period. A good deal more, I should think, than the Congressional Budget Office could hope to get a grip on.

And if they had all been funded, at a very low average estimate of $30,000 each, they would have added $8,025,000,000 to the budget. The plain absurdity of these figures illustrate the silliness of his pointless busyness.

The editorial puzzles over how much time Rep. Michaud could possibly have spent pondering the merits of each of his 500 proposals. Deducting the times necessarily devoted to sleeping, eating, hygiene, committee attendance, campaigning, raising campaign funds, national issues, and reading the funny papers, it is obvious that little time was spent on each proposal.

Michaud is too shrewd and experienced a politician to provide the details. That would only emphasize the silliness of his earmarking frenzy and leave him open to questions about proposals he won’t even be able to remember making.

John N. Frary, Farmington