Everything You Wanted to Know About Earmarks (1)

President Obama signed a $410 billion appropriations bill into law this week, keeping the U.S. government operating until the start of the new federal Fiscal Year on 1 October. Why a mid-year appropriation of this size and magnitude is necessary is another story. The Congressional actions passing the bill and sending it to the President has renewed the unending chatter about that nasty e- word.
Earmarks.

The outcry on the Hill and also in The White House against the procedure whereby a Member of Congress (in either House) designates specific program funding in an appropriation bill has become very shrill. In part because the President, while on the campaign trail last year, demanded earmark reform as part of his call for Washington to stop “doing business as usual.”

Also adding to the media flurry of stories about earmarks this week was scrutiny on what was funded. Every media organization wants to be the first to discover the new “Bridge to Nowhere” earmark (an earmark for appropriation inserted by former US Senator from Alaska Ted Stevens). Every appropriation bill seems to have had a stinker of a program, or some bizarre initiative funded through an earmark that becomes the poster child of the continued frenzy on pork spending and those nasty earmarks.

“Do as I say, not as I do,” has always been the contradictory stance on the subject of earmarks. Congressional members of both parties are often seen on national news criticizing programs receiving earmarks, although many of the same members have also inserted funding for programs for their districts. It seems that for Congress, their constituents and many media organizations, earmarks are evil and programs considered pork spending if the programs are outside their district and state.

Members of Congress have and always will be advocates for funding on projects in their state. They are elected to represent their constituents and those members should be working to ensure fair and equitable spending of federal dollars in their districts. If Members did not do this, they would not be in office very long. This is not shocking news and is universal in all politics.

Yes, there are often insertions of earmarks that occur at the eleventh hour without scrutiny that have more to do with pure political power than they do with equitable funding. Earmarks are not the problem of any one party, ideology or Member. There are ways to affect a better process when it comes to earmarks. Both Houses can enact procedures making the earmark process fairer, more transparent and subject to evaluation and qualification. That process can be achieved internally as a matter of House rules, not requiring legislation or any painfully long process.

The sham of the show of disgust on the floor of both Houses against earmarks is ridiculous and somehow avoids getting to the solution of creating procedural process in fixing real problems. The smoke and mirror show is used when there is a desire by whatever party is in the minority to slow or derail certain appropriation bills and has seldom ever been an attempt to review the earmark process. Members have been shown complaining about earmarks in bills, while those same bills contained their own earmarks!

Yes, there are programs and projects inserted into appropriations bills that never should have been there. The authors are powerful Chairs of Committees, have favors owed and all of those standard political IOU’s that come into play in the legislative process.

So, if Members are serious they should fix the rules and move on.

The President should not get bogged down in this discussion and leave the rules of the House to Congress. The complaints about earmarks are a distraction. Many of the programs and projects funded in the bill President Obama signed this week are in keeping with the objective of jump-starting the economy and bring jobs and funding to needed federal programs.
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1. But were afraid to ask! (Apologies to Author Woody Allen)