Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Promises and Earmarks, Pros and Cons

By

Correction: March 11, 2009

An article on March 2 about President Obama’s plan to sign a $410 billion spending bill that included thousands of lawmakers’ pet projects misstated his campaign promise about projects of this type, known as earmarks. Mr. Obama promised to reform the earmark process, not to end it.

What did Obama say:

  • He wanted to go line by line through the federal budget.
  • Earmarks account for 0.5% of the federal budget, about $18 billion.
  • The system needs reform and there are screwy things we spend money on.

You can watch what Obama actually said (as opposed to what Lou Dobbs and Fox News claim he said), here:

Someone promised to eliminate earmarks. Who was it? Why! It was Senator McCain, the guy who lost the election.

The Washington Post has some contributions (heavily weighted Republican, by the way) on earmarks. There are a lot of points to consider there:

  1. Earmarks can be for useful projects.
  2. Earmarks do not involve a competition for appropriations.
  3. Congress’ role is not inappropriate:

    But someone is going to decide whether to allocate money for projects, contracts or programs. Simply put, who is better capable of making good decisions: bureaucrats with no connection to local areas, preferences or needs, or people whose livelihoods depend on keeping close ties to those areas and the people in them, who will be directly affected by the decisions?

    (Norman Orenstein, an AEI scholar)

  4. Ron Paul thinks they can provide transparency into spending. Doing away with them might make the executive branch too powerful.
  5. In a number of cases, earmark appropriations are a down payment on a project. They do not fund it completely, but commit the federal government to its more expensive completion.
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Comments

  1. Earmark elimination is an issue promoted by those who either can’t focus on more important issues like jobs, healthcare reform, the economy, or by those who don’t want us to focus on the more important issues.

    <

    p>The news media loves this issue because they can wrap their arms around belittling some project without ever having to do the analysis about why it may be important to a particular state or district.

    <

    p>Abuse is abuse (bridges to nowhere) and should always be called out, but just because an individual(s) abuses the system does not mean the system has no efficacy.

    • From my understanding, the budget amount is fixed.  Certain amounts for this, that and the other thing.  The earmarks just divert some of the monies away from the Executive and to the areas under Congressional influence.  

      <

      p>Neither have a monopoly on waste and, granted some of this winds up as waste.  In the historical view, there is plenty of waste between the Executive and Legislative.  At least with Congressional earmarks, there is some accountability as to the waster.  

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      p>“Fool and your tax dollars are soon parted.”  -Anon.

      <

      p>

    • I generally agree with gonzoD’s comment. I am glad it is the first comment. I held back from drawing political conclusions and gonzoD did better than I would have.

      I’m not convinced that earmarking is the process we want. First off, their sheer quantity helps them elude oversight.

      <

      p>Second, the practice of using an earmark to commit the federal government to a larger and longer project would seem to evade necessary planning.

      <

      p>Finally, from a policy perspective, Obama is correct to emphasize transparency. Politically, I don’t know. The press takes things to the lowest common denominator. I never imagined that there were integers that small. One can imagine a himbo news anchor complaining about the new improved, system: to him, it’ll be sooo confusing. So it’ll be just like earmarks and he’ll ask random people on the street to confirm this.

    • “Earmark elimination is an issue promoted by those who either can’t focus on more important issues . . .”

      <

      p>Well, I mean, a billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking about real money!! đŸ™‚

      <

      p>Best,
      Chuck

  2. Why doesn’t Pelosi and Boehner [Reid & McConnell] sit down and basically split the earmarks money?  50:50, according to body makeup, something between… it doesn’t matter much.  The idea is to set a ceiling dollar amount for earmarks, and let the parties “dole them out” to get the votes they need and the special projects done where useful without letting the dollar amount get out of hand.  Besides, having leadership involved helps reduce the number of bridges to nowhere while preserving the earmarks which are useful for whatever local reason.

    <

    p>Maybe this puts too much power in leadership.  Maybe this is too hard to handle.  Maybe it doesn’t matter what the actual dollar amount is, it will always get criticized blindly.  Maybe more sunshine on who puts in the earmark and ensuring that there aren’t no-bid earmarks will help end the abuse while preserving the usefulness of the earmarks.

    <

    p>As things are now, neither party has incentive to rein it in unless the other side will too, and that just hasn’t happened.

    • Earmarks stem from a large part of the reason that we have a representative legislature linked to particular patches of land — so those reps can work in the interests of their district.  An earmark, at best, is a device where the needs and opportunities of the district receive targeted spending.  That is a good thing.  Otherwise, we could have 435 people living in DC write the budget.

      <

      p>Is there waste in earmarks?  Sure!  Just as there’s waste in many parts of the government spending and investment process.  I suspect there’s a whole lot more waste in defense spending than in earmarks…funny then how we hear so much more about earmarks.

      • Isn’t it the case that at least some of the reason we have bloat in defense spending is that we cannot get rid of weapons systems built where this or that Congressperson or Senator has constituents?

        • … the military.  Before Shinseki was encouraged to retire, one of his jobs was to re-think army infrastructure in order to improve deployment time tables.  He mentioned in an interview (60 Minutes I believe) that one of his biggest problems was congress pushing equipment that was counterproductive toward his mission.

  3. is that they are buried in bills having nothing to do with the subject or target of the earmark. My position is that transparency is the needed quality. Put the earmarks in bills that address the issue.

    <

    p>Without it, Senators and Congresspersons will go on being dishonest. Per the Philadelphia Daily News:

    <

    p>

    Obama is hardly the first president to promise to make Congress change its pork-barreling ways, and he certainly won’t be the last. But he is the first to retreat so quickly, after only six weeks in the White House.
    “I just went through a campaign . . . where both candidates promised change in Washington, promised change from the wasteful, disgraceful, corrupting practice of earmarked, pork-barrel spending,” McCain said. “So what we doing here? Not only business as usual, [but] an outrageous insult to the American people.”
    Only a week ago, Obama was pressing Democratic leaders in Congress to pare back the earmarks at a private White House meeting.
    The president, however, hit a brick wall with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of California, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, and other Democrats who treasure their right to send taxpayer money to their states and districts for park improvements, university research grants, equipment for police departments and redevelopment projects.
    “I’m here to tell everyone that we have an obligation as members of Congress to help direct spending to our states,” Reid told reporters last week

    .

    <

    p>Your weasel-worded post states that Obama promised to “reform” earmarks, as opposed to eliminating them.

    <

    p>We’re waiting . . .

    <

    p>Best,
    Chuck

    • or reading comprehension?

      <

      p>Obama never pledged to eliminate earmarks.  He did promise to reform the process.  He didn’t promise to reform the process in the very first budget session, something that was in progress before he even got to Washington.

      <

      p>The Constitution does limit Obama’s options here, and he tried a little pressure and we’ll see what happens next year when the whole budget process is under his watch.

      <

      p>Does anybody have a handy-dandy earmark over time chart, complete with earmarks for red and blue districts, as a function of their representative in Washington?  It’s not clear to me that both parties use earmarks equally — and I’d love to see some data about which party’s members are earmark heavy.

    • …without a line-item veto, there’s precious little a POTUS can do about earmarks.  Nixon tried impoundment, but that got him into trouble.  There are various ways to handle this.  My understanding is that these are often inserted during conference even if they weren’t included in either chamber’s original version; that shouldn’t be allowed.  I agree that amendments should be germane to the original purpose of the bill.  I believe the House has strict germanity rules but the Senate does not.  These amendments should be voted up or down one at a time.  It might even be wise to require a minimum waiting period between filing of legislation and floor vote to make sure members have time to read legislation.

    • Even the Boehner is very careful not to say that Obama promised to eliminate earmarks. If you look at his language, its very precise.

      <

      p>Did you look at the video?

      <

      p>I didn’t think so.

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