Congressional earmarks keep popping up no matter how much good government groups and sympathetic members of Congress try to suppress them. And many of the politicians who rail against earmarks are the ones who find ways to use them, keeping the earmarks hidden by labeling them differently or burying them within legislation. But an earmark by any other name…
The majority of House members and Senators decry earmarks in public and give the impression they would like to eliminate them permanently. But it seems as if you can’t keep a good political payoff down. The placing of earmarks in legislation has continued in spite of the supposed moratorium on this activity enacted by Congress in 2011.
Currently, a favorite strategy of lawmakers is to use special funds in spending and authorization bills for projects in their districts or states. As an illustration, early this year the budget passed for the Army Corps of Engineers contained 26 different funds totaling $507 million for construction, maintenance and other projects that were not part of the original bill. It has been noted by budget watchdogs that the funds for these 26 projects were approximately the same as the earmarks in the 2010 budget. The nation’s budget deficits and the need to reduce spending did not act as a brake for the members of Congress, who added more money for the Corps than the president had requested.
According to Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) contained 111 earmarks. Of these, 59 utilized the exact language found in previous earmarks. A report from Senator Claire McCaskill’s office in December of 2011 found 115 earmarks in the NDAA. These cost taxpayers $834 million. Among those who requested the earmarks were twenty Congressional Republican freshmen who had campaigned against the practice. No surprise.
Further analysis by CAGW showed that 12 of 16 appropriation bills for FY 2012 that they had examined contained earmarks, with 251 projects totaling $9.6 billion. This is actually reduced since the moratorium went into effect, as earmarks in FY 2010 totaled $16.5 billion. However, transparency is now gone, with earmarks hidden within the text of legislation and not easily discerned. Earmarks previously were listed in a single table with the amount of the project, its location and with the names of those who requested the earmark attached to the request.
Unfortunately, past earmarks are still contributing to our budget deficits and wasting taxpayer money. An example is a drip pan for helicopters that attaches beneath the roofs to catch leaking transmission fluid. Congressman Harold Rogers, the current Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, aka the Prince of Pork, requested as an earmark in 2009 that these pans be manufactured by a Kentucky company, a major contributor to him and to Republican groups. The cost to the Army for these drip pans, awarded without competitive bidding, was $17,000 each, compared to a similar pan from another manufacturer that cost $2500. The Army has already spent $6.5 million on these devices with more to come.
The Earmark Elimination Act, co-sponsored by Republican Pat Toomeyand Democrat Claire McCaskill, last year was an attempt to permanently end all earmarks, but was defeated when it came before the Senate in February. However, it seems that no matter what legislation is enacted that tries to eliminate earmarks, members of Congress and Senators will find ways to circumvent the ban. Politicians want to pay back businesses that support them in order to generate more campaign funding, and they want to finance projects in their districts to garner more votes. Thus, whatever laws the House and Senate pass against earmarks, they will always have loopholes that allow legislators to continue the practice they appear to oppose.
Resurrecting Democracy
A VietNam vet and a Columbia history major who became a medical doctor, Bob Levine has watched the evolution of American politics over the past 40 years with increasing alarm. He knows he’s not alone. Partisan grid-lock, massive cash contributions and even more massive expenditures on lobbyists have undermined real democracy, and there is more than just a whiff of corruption emanating from Washington. If the nation is to overcome lockstep partisanship, restore growth to the economy and bring its debt under control, Levine argues that it will require a strong centrist third party to bring about the necessary reforms. Levine’s previous book, Shock Therapy For the American Health Care System took a realist approach to health care from a physician’s informed point of view; Resurrecting Democracy takes a similar pragmatic approach, putting aside ideology and taking a hard look at facts on the ground. In his latest book, Levine shines a light that cuts through the miasma of party propaganda and reactionary thinking, and reveals a new path for American politics. This post is cross posted from his blog.
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Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020