Fed Spending Falls On Deaf Ear(marks)
Dec 11th, 2009 | 14 responses
Sen. John McCain, who should know, once complained that Congress spends money on earmarks like a drunken sailor. This spending spree seen by penny-pinching Republican taxpayers was one of the central causes why the GOP lost both houses of Congress by the 2008 elections.
Now that the Democrats are in control, earmarks continue to pad appropriation bills but at a slightly lower level than when the Republicans were in charge. It’s still an obscene culture.
The watchdog group Taxpayers For Common Sense reported the omnibus spending bill passed by the House contains 5,224 earmarks costing about $3.9 billion of the total $447 billion measure. But, that’s only earmarks reported by House members voluntarily. Nor does it include the military spending bill which traditionally has more earmarks than all the other spending bills combined. That’s an average 12 earmarks for each House member.
No Republican voted for the bill but many of the projects included earmarks placed in the bill by the GOP before the final floor vote.
The measure brings total earmarks in this year’s spending bills to 7,577 at a cost of about $6 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. The Pentagon spending bill, the last of the annual appropriations bills, is expected to contain more earmarks than the omnibus bill, said Steve Ellis of the taxpayer group.
Click here for a more detailed report on the omnibus bill compiled by Taxpayers For Common Sense.
Congress defends the practice despite the criticism because it shows they are delivering the bacon for constituents back home, or to put a spin on it, returning their taxes in gift packages.
Knocking earmarks as special favors has become a cottage industry in itself. I tend to look at alternative sources of financing. For example, the City of Bellflower, Calif., receives a $100,000 earmark to build bus shelters. Suggestion: Have the city or transit district build them and allow merchants to advertise in which the revenue eventually would pay for the cost.
Example: Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel), who secured $800,000 for the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail, said that the project would help generate tourism dollars. Suggestion: Take a portion of the hotel-motel tax to improve the trail and more tourists will come.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a leading critic of pork-barrel spending, singled out for criticism $200,000 provided for the Aquatic Adventures Science Education Foundation in San Diego. Rep. Susan A. Davis (D-San Diego) said that the money would go to a program that will “inspire children to pursue education in the sciences while encouraging students from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to college.” This seems to me a duplication of services already offered by the San Diego City Schools District and private enterprises such as the Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park.
Another example: A $250,000 earmark for textile research at UC Davis. Suggestion: Apply for a grant from the textile manufacturers association. They’re the beneficiaries.
I did a little researching on my own and realized even the non-profit organizations have problems with earmarks. That is, they too often are granted not on merit but by who you know in Congress.
Rich Cohen, a veteran community development director, writing in the Nonprofit Quarterly:
:
While we understand some of the arguments in favor of earmarks, especially those raised by rural groups that point out how earmarks constitute a small but important mechanism for getting money to rural areas notwithstanding the frequent built-in urban biases to many federal competitive programs, we tend to be unsympathetic toward earmarks in the federal budget. Relatively few nonprofits to our knowledge have the political connections or can pay for the earmark-lobbying experts to win these grants. The playing field for nonprofits competing for grant support of any kind is hardly level, we know, but earmarks clearly reflect one of the most uneven, asymmetrical dimensions of the federal grants scrum.
I confess I have scant faith in the feds doling out taxpayer money when the economy remains in the doldrums and federal deficits and national debt expressed in trillions of dollars. Perhaps in better times …
Perhaps we should enact a concept in which Bill Maher invokes on his HBO show. In a segment called “New Rules” I would decree only federal projects awarded taxpayer funding until the economy rights itself.
It reminds me when then Gov. Jerry Brown admonished Californians during an earlier recession to “lower your horizons.”
14 Responses to “Fed Spending Falls On Deaf Ear(marks)”
Sam Farr is one weird dude.
$800,000 for a hiking trail?
Mr. Remmers, may I suggest an investigative study into this absurdity?
The gall.
From a previous thread : STIMULUS PORK. I haven’t studied the stimulus bill beyond what I read in the press, but I do know that over $52 million is going in my hometown (Bangor, Maine) to renovate for energy efficiency improvements etc. a single federal building where one of our state’s US Senators has an office.
This is VERY big pork.
Good thing we have Obama wielding the veto pen, after all he spoke out strongly against earmarks during his campaign.
we say we want everyone to stop the earmarks, but then we bitch about senators and “what have they done for [my state]?!”
people say they don't want earmarks, but then they whine when they don't get them. and vote for someone else. until that stops, and it won't, neither will the earmarks.
Actually, the GOP lost control of both Houses of Congress in 2006.
If your comparing the earmarks of the 111th Congress and the 110th, your comparing a democratically controlled Congress with another Democratically controlled Congress.
Some more numbers:
*Oink* hope *Oink* change. *Oink* *Oink* *Oink*
Also of note
http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/earmarks_…
:
Congrats to those 5 Democrats and 37 Republicans.
ObamaCo has dwarfed previous spending and borrowing. And, after similar misspending for “stimulus” has failed, the answer is, of course, more spending. “We have to continue to spend our way out of this recession.” That wasn't predictable, disgusting hack Paul Krugman parroting his current stance again. That was President Obama's recently expressed position on what needs to be done (in addition to health care “reform” that will increase expenses).
Short term, these people will keep buying votes and getting re-elected and relying on keeping things doing until they retire and have left. (It's obvious that's a major motivator why they avoid reforming Social Security and Medicare. Do not defer over-gratification, while denying and postponing indefinitely the realities and acts that are unpleasant. Great “parenting” by Washington, whom some view parentally.)
Long term, this will stop when the money runs out, not just from entitlement program failures and drastic constraints and adjustments, but from a debt trap as well as problems related to currency inflation (both events of which are likely).
lol+ LOL
Excellent points. Thanks
It's the catch 22 screw the people game. Get rid of the lobby, except for individuals, and, earmarks except for that which is voted on by the entire body within it’s own bill, and, you effectively empower the individual voter against special interests. Which are most Generally corporations.
It is not so much what the congressman gets while in office, it’s the giant salary and figure head corporate position the congressman gets after office that is never scrutinized. Clearly corruption is not being addressed in American government. On the contrary, it’s daily business.
Another bit of incest that I'd forgotten about. Good points.
“Good thing we have Obama wielding the veto pen, after all he spoke out strongly against earmarks during his campaign.”
He'll use it someday, just as he'll someday keep his vow to reform entitlements, oh, I am sure.
(Interestingly, he could use the veto pen on a bad, i.e., not generous enough, health care “reform” bill.)
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