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The Problem with Earmarks
If you’ve been unconvinced by my continuous prattling on about the issues with earmarks, I hope that a Charles Babcock article in today’s Washington Post will help. Called “The Project that Wouldn’t Die,” Babcock’s piece examines funding for “Project M” – an earmark-funded contract given to Vibration & Sound Solutions Limited (VSSL) of Alexandria, VA. Since 1997, the company has marketed its product successively as “a way to keep submarine machinery quieter”, “a way to keep Navy SEALs safer in their boats”, and now “as a possible way to protect Marines from roadside bombs.”
Congressional funding for this program, long sustained by Virginia congressmen, is drying up – and since the company apparently has no other business, it’s closing. Babcock: “Analysts and others who follow congressional earmarking closely say the company’s experience exemplifies one of the pitfalls of the process: Once begun, promising but speculative programs like Project M are hard to kill, sustained by members of Congress who want to keep jobs in their districts, military officials who want to keep their options open and businesspeople who want to keep their companies afloat.”
The Pentagon wasn’t ever particularly interested in VSSL’s technology. The man in charge of overseeing the project for DoD is quoted as saying that the company “seemed to me a solution looking for a problem the Navy might have. But it kept failing to solve any problems the Navy had. It looked at first as if it might have some merit. But we found out quickly it didn’t really solve the problems. And the company wasn’t very responsive and wasn’t very robust.”
Babcock’s report adds that even after the Pentagon rejected VSSL’s plan in 2001, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) kept pushing funding for the company (and he has also received more than $17,000 in campaign contributions from VSSL’s president and his wife).
Some stats: “The number of earmarks in the annual defense spending bill increased from 587 worth $4.2 billion in fiscal 1994 to 2,506 worth $9 billion in fiscal 2005, according to a recent Congressional Research Service study. There were 231 ‘plus-ups’ – the Navy’s term for the money Congress adds for its members’ pet projects – totaling nearly $600 million just in the Office of Naval Research budget in fiscal 2005, about a quarter of the total.”
This is a problem. And until members of Congress take serious steps to end their addiction to earmaking, it’s not a problem that’s going away.
7 Responses to “The Problem with Earmarks”
Yeah but….
Just because one “limited liablity company” is a waste and produced nothing, it does not mean that all of them do. A heck-of-a-lot has been created because of these earmarks. Why don’t we see better research here showing the positive developments these earmarks have produced?
This article is not very objective.
True alot of these companies have pushed engineering forward and improved our lives in other ways that are beyond military applications.
But this stuff reeks of what Eisenhower warned us of in his final presidential adress.
Military-industrial complex.
The problem with earmarks is their backdoor nature. Reform demanding full discosure and debate will slow down the backroom deals of both parties. Some of the research is a little crazy, miss the old days when high tech hammers and toilet seats could be debated. Watch out for the “Shark Mercenaries”.
Attack Shark Does anyone remember the name of the Wisconsin or Minnesota politician who attacked Pentagon waste, I have an attack of brain freeze?
Indeed some of those companies may have produced things of value, however, money spent on defense usually has the lowest possible multiplier effect, and is optimized in a way inconsistent with more general use.
The point is that government is at best no better than private enterprise at picking technology winners, but the “weeding out” process in private industry prunes unsuccessful technologies whereas a well placed Senator or Congress member can arbitrarily prolong the life a pet project, as was described in the article.
I think there *is* a case to be made for certain types of basic research being done by the government, and there seem to be some perverse market incentives going on with the patenting of genes in biotech, but earmarks traditionally fatten existing companies with existing products, so it’s commercialization or productization, not basic research.
Rudi, I believe you’re thinking of former Wisconsin Senator Proxmire and his Golden Fleece awards, which went after all kinds of spending he and his staff considered wasteful, not just defense spending.
I would argue that some of Senator Proxmire’s targets were worthwhile expenses but it would be nice to see the Golden Fleece awards, which I believe are still compiled, make a return to prominence. There is so much wasteful spending hidden among bits of useful spending in these earmarks that it would be nice to see some of it publicized and maybe some lawmakers shamed into not creating such earmarks.
You can give a small organization 2 million bucks a year research/develop something or you can pay a big company like Lockheed or Rayteon mega millions to do the same thing.
Its research. Meaning it don’t alway pan out, thats why they call it “research”. Minor millions or major millions, its up to you.
…or you can give either (or both) mega millions over the span of a decade or more to research/develop something that everyone involved can see will go nowhere. No matter who that money goes to, it’s wasted.
Sure, it’s research. After a few years, though, it’s research that everyone knows is going nowhere. At that point, it’s handouts.
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[bumped back to the top of the page due to the update] Less than a week after voting themselves a seventh straight cost of living pay increase, the GOP House scuttled an attempt to raise the minimum wage for the…