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"Earmarks can play a vital role in poor, rural communities that need help from the federal government," said Giffords."I take the government's budgeting process very seriously, but my constituents work hard and pay their taxes," she said. "They should see their dollars come back to their communities." Giffords helped secure funding for 19 projects last year, including about $390,000 for the Chiricahua Community Health Center in Cochise County, which operates three clinics and two mobile units near the border with Mexico. Officials there plan to use the money to move a dental practice now being run out of a dilapidated single-wide trailer into an Elfrida clinic. They also plan to create a separate waiting room at a Douglas clinic for pediatrics patients, who now wait to be seen by doctors in an overcrowded adult waiting room.