Tracking earmarks: Putting names on favors.
Ears marked
Last week, in a development that went almost unnoticed amid the national furor over health care reform, two of Washington’s nonpartisan watchdog organizations released a comprehensive database of how Congress spent $19.9 billion on 11,286 earmarked projects in fiscal year 2009.
You remember “earmarks,” those special allocations that are approved outside of the usual appropriations process. The issue was all the rage during the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, thanks to Alaska’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” Congress vowed to reform itself; a few members, including Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., pledged not to earmark anything.
The “reforms” take the form of removing secrecy from the process, not in stopping the process altogether. In fact, according to a report by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Center for Responsive Politics, the $19.9 billion spent on 11,286 earmarked projects in the 2009 budget bills actually exceed the $18.3 billion for 11,780 projects in the FY 2008 budget bills.
The good news, such as it is, is that now it is possible to trace each earmark back to the individual member of Congress (or group of members) who requested it. That should help the accountability process, particularly at election time.
Relative to a budget of $3 trillion a year, $19.9 billion in earmarks is chump change: less than two-thirds of 1 percent of all spending. Plus, a case (perhaps not a persuasive case, but a case nonetheless) could be made that every earmark in the budget represents an important public need.
But in the real world, $19.9 billion is not chump change. It represents $66 for every man, woman and child in the United States, some of whom probably would rather keep the money than see it spent — to pick one project at random — on $392,000 worth of improvements at the Sauget Business Park. Rep. Jerry F. Costello, D-Belleville, sponsored that one.
The problem with earmarks is one of process: They can slide through without scrutiny. They are treated as political backscratching. They suck up money that might better be spent on other national priorities, or not at all.
The database released last week attempts to correlate lobbying and campaign contributions to earmarks. You can read, for example, that DRS Technologies of West Plains, Mo., spent $320,000 lobbying Congress in 2008. And then you can note that Sen. Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., signed off on a $1 million earmark for the Chemical Biological Protective Shelters that the firm makes.
The correlation is imprecise. Many of the earmarks go to city and county governments and public universities, whose lobbying activities are far easier to trace than those of private entities. There are many ways to disguise the source of campaign contributions. But disclosure rules should make it more difficult for earmarks to be passed out as campaign favors. In fact, the new rules already have slowed the growth in the number of earmarks being requested.
In 2009, Democrats got 54 percent of the earmarks and Republicans got 46 percent. More than $5.2 billion had bipartisan support. Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, led Congress with more than $1.2 billion in earmarks in 2009, including more than $150 million for which he was the sole sponsor.
Mr. Bond, also a Senate appropriator, led the bistate delegation with $320 million in earmarks; he was the sole sponsor for $120 million of those. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate deputy majority leader, signed off on $225.4 million and was sole sponsor of $62.7 million.
During all of the FY 2008 budget process and most of FY 2009, the junior senator from Illinois was Barack Obama. He was a relative piker at the process in 2008, signing onto only 58 and was the sole sponsor of only eight.
But the 2009 budget, a product of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, included at least $17.8 billion in unspecified earmark requests. Those were requests only; Congress has final approval.
Earmarks aren’t going away, not as long as members of Congress have to run for re-election. Even stalwart conservatives like Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, love earmarks — he signed off on $80.7 million of them in 2009. But Congress should be willing to defend them in the light of day. The new database is a good place for that to begin.
Actually, the Constitution, giving the power of the purse to Congress, followed a hard fought tradition dating back to the Magna Carta. Giving the executive branch a blank check for administrators to determine the beneficiaries behind closed doors is much less transparent. An earmark takes a bill that says, say, here is $50 million for transportation (to use a quaint old budget number) and a Congressman says, I want $5 million of that to be for the interstate highway going through my state.
Whether the Congressman allocates a portion or not, that bill is going to approve $50 million for highways. It is more transparent and Constitutional than abdicating that responsibility to the executive office.
Most people talking about earmarks seem to be trying to get another unConstitutional line item veto, which was previously stricken down by the Supreme Court as a delegation of a nondelegatable duty kept in Congress by the separation of powers structure of the Constitution.
What Ron Paul tends to do, since he finds much of the spending unConstitutional to begin with, is to put in his district’s share, in case it goes through, but then when the vote on the bill itself comes up, he votes against it.
We desperately need a separation of money & state just like the separation of church & state, and for a lot of overlapping reasons.
To egoist,
Until we can get a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court ruling that equated campaign spending with free speech, there will be no “separation of money and state”.
Rich Brown, I agree. I remember the Supreme Court deciding against President Clinton (when he used the short lived Presidential line item veto) and that decision was pretty much the end of any hope for control on earmarks ‘n pork.
What was that about Claire McCaskill? Apparently she prefers earmarks for Pennsylvania over Missouri. Read from The Source:
March 05, 2009
Earmarks and Claire…
Far be it from the Source to take issue with David Goldstein’s “beat sweetener” story on Claire McCaskill opposing earmarks.
However, we cannot let this one go. The Star got rolled big time by Claire’s press operation.
Yesterday, Claire gave a major speech on the Senate floor. She railed against Republicans, she kind of railed against Democrats, she pounder her fist and shook her finger at the hypocrisy of Republicans complaining about spending, but accepting earmarks. She left us no doubt that she opposes earmarks and is all but a caped crusader against them.
Except that, she’s not.
On the SAME DAY as her speech, Claire voted to keep 13 earmarks in the bill for a company that was raided and clearly is under investigation by the FBI.
Roll Call reports it thusly:
“The amendment would have eliminated 13 provisions connected to the PMA Group lobbying firm, which was raided by the FBI in November as part of an investigation of potentially improper campaign contributions.
The vote on the PMA amendment was closer than expected, with a number of Democrats waiting until the waning moments to cast their votes. The two Colorado Democrats split their votes on the amendment, with Sen. Michael Bennet — who faces re-election in two years — voting for it, and Sen. Mark Udall, who has a full six-year term, voting against it.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) voted for Coburn’s PMA amendment. At the end of the vote, McCaskill voted with Democratic leadership and against Coburn, though she had spoken out against earmarks earlier in the day.
Prior to the vote, Coburn warned his colleagues that, “Anyone who votes against my amendment on PMA — they’re going to have a lot of ’splaining to do.”
The Amendment passed 52-43 to keep the projects in the bill. When Claire McCaskill had an opportunity to actually do something about earmarks- she simply voted the party line.
She’s betting that no media outlet has the guts to call her out on her blatant hypocrisy. The sad part is that she just might be right.
Don’t worry American People, if we run out of money to fund our pork projects, we’ll just you tax more.
If your’re a member of Congress, life is GREAT!!!
I could live with earmarks (up to a point), if the Court didn’t equate paid speech with free speech, and thus gutted the lobbying industry.
How many millions have the Pharma and health insurers spent lobbying Congress against the American People? To say nothing of what they’ve overtly and covertly spent on PR (which admittedly is not subject to speech limits)? At least with strict lobbying controls the people would have a chance with Congress, regardless of how much PR money they spend.
So what we have to do is convince Warren Buffet to push as many campaign finance reform suits as possible. Choke the system on finance reform cases until the Courts cry uncle and allow tighter controls.
This isn’t good news it’s great news. Earmarks should be banned. Earmarks are a “legal” way for our lawmakers to pay for support. It is a reverse bribe and is abused by members of both parties.