In defense of earmarks

By Weekly Archive On Mar 17, 2009

There
are few absolute rules in Washington, but here’s one of them: When
everybody’s saying the same thing, they’re bound to be wrong.

And
that’s the case today with earmarks. There are 8,750 of them,
totaling $7.7 billion, in the $410 billion Omnibus Spending Bill just
passed by Congress and signed by President Obama. If you believe
either John McCain or Barack Obama, every one of those earmarks is
evil, lurking somewhere in the company of axe murderers, child
molesters and poison ivy.

Nonsense!
Would McCain and Obama please stop treating us like children? Yet
even a child could understand that not all earmarks are evil. I defy
anyone, for example, to eliminate the $150,000 sponsored by Maine
Sen. Susan Collins in the newly signed Omnibus Spending Bill for
"lobster research." Sure, we could all live without
occasionally feasting on Maine lobster. But who would want to?

Don’t
get me wrong. Have there been widespread abuses with earmarks?
Absolutely.

Earmarks,
or money inserted into spending bills by members of Congress for pet
projects in their own states or districts, are often used to waste
tax dollars on frivolous items that would never be approved were they
debated in the light of day and voted on, up or down. Surely most
senators would find it hard to justify Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye’s
$238,000 appropriation for the "Polynesian Voyaging Society of
Honolulu" — an ancient-style canoe sailing club — as worthy of
your tax dollars and mine.

At
the same time, you must admit, earmarks, like beauty, are in the eyes
of the beholder. Or, sometimes, in the noses of neighbors. Take Iowa
Sen. Tom Harkin’s controversial $1.7 million for "Swine Odor and
Manure Management Research." As a resident of Washington, D.C.,
I don’t have any problem with pig manure (bull manure’s another
issue!). But if I lived downwind from a hog farm in Iowa, I’d
consider that $1.7 million money well spent.

What’s
especially obnoxious about the debate over earmarks today is the
sanctimonious stand of Republican lawmakers. Suddenly they’ve gotten
religion when it comes to fiscal responsibility. One by one, 17
different Republicans took to the Senate floor to blame Democrats for
earmarks and denounce the spending bill as a "honey pot"
and "orgy of spending." What hypocrites! Every one of them
had loaded up the legislation with earmarks of his or her own.

The
fact is, Democrats agreed in January to limit earmark spending to 50
percent of 2006 levels. There are fewer earmarks in this year’s
spending bill than in the last bill passed by a Republican-controlled
Congress: 8,750 compared to over 11,000. And, for the first time,
under Democrats, transparency reigns. Earmarks must be posted on
committee websites. Every voter can find out who put in how much in
the spending bill and for what purpose. That’s real change.

And,
besides, if Republicans were really so holier than thou about
earmarks, why did they sponsor so many earmarks themselves? Forty
percent of all earmarks in this year’s spending bill were
Republican-sponsored. While Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia
tops the list, six out of 10 big spenders are Senate Republicans, led
by Thad Cochran of Mississippi, with 65 earmarks, and Richard Shelby
of Alabama, with 64, including $800,000 for an oyster rehabilitation
grant to the University of South Alabama.

On
the same day President Obama reluctantly signed the Omnibus Spending
Bill, House Democrats adopted new measures to reform the earmark
process even further. From now on, earmarks will be subject to a
20-day review by the relevant executive-branch agency, which can give
them a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Earmarks will be limited to no more
than 1 percent of the discretionary budget. And any earmark for a
private, for-profit company will be subject to competitive bidding.

Congressional
scholar Norm Epstein of the American Enterprise Institute praised the
new rules as "a solid, practical and comprehensive set of new
steps." And maybe, someday, Congress will even approve a
line-item veto, enabling a president to go through the budget line by
line and red-pencil expenditures he or she finds unnecessary or
frivolous. Meantime, it makes more sense to continue to reform the
earmark process, rather than pretend we will, or should, eliminate
earmarks altogether.

President
Obama should say about earmarks what President Clinton, after a
similar flap, once said about affirmative action: It’s time to mend
it, not end it.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "Train
Wreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too
Soon)." You
can hear "The Bill Press Show" at his Web site:
billpressshow.com. His email address is: bill@billpress.com.