Earmarks never went away --- they changed addresses
Earmarks never went away --- they changed addresses
BY SARAH WESTWOOD | SEPTEMBER 26, 2014 | 5:00 AM
Earmarks were once a way for members of Congress to carve out federal funding for projects in...Congress banned legislative earmarks in 2010, but that didn't end pork barrel spending; it just moved over to the federal bureaucracy.
Earmarks were once a way for members of Congress to carve outfederal funding for projects in their districts. It was the way to "bring home the bacon."
But Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., began a push in 2005 against earmarks — which he called "the gateway drug to federal spending addiction."
"When earmarks were banned, that was supposed to make sure lawmakers were focused on making decisions that were best for the nation as a whole," a spokesperson for Coburn's office told the Washington Examiner.
"That's why we have local funding, so that local and state governments can fund those types of projects," Coburn said.
Lawmakers now haggle with executive branch officials for funds rather than each other through a process known as "letter-marking" or "phone-marking."
Instead of inserting earmarks in legislation, congressmen use letters and telephone calls to pressure executive branch bureaucrats to fund projects back home in their districts.
Pork spending secured directly through federal agencies requires no vote, no public explanation and no reduction in spending.
According to the government watchdog group Cause of Action, which launched a website in early September dedicated to exposing executive earmarks, federal grant spending has jumped 40 percent since 2001.
Cause of Action began investigating executive branch earmarks in December 2011, when the group sent Freedom of Information Act requests to 21 different agencies to track down discretionary grants.
Hundreds of letters resulting from the organization’s probe and compiled on its new website reveal a pattern of funding requests that echo the language once found in legislative earmarks.
The Cause of Action website features a digital timeline of milestones in earmarking’s evolution, including Executive Order 13457, “Protecting American Taxpayers from Government Spending on Wasteful Earmarks,” which President George W. Bush signed in 2008.
The order, which requires publication of all communications between Congress and federal agencies regarding earmark funds on the agencies’ respective websites within 30 days, was never enforced.
Of the 17 agencies Cause for Action analyzed, only five had online pages displaying the communications, and only one had been updated in the past five years.
The Obama administration has yet to enforce the order and continues to place confidence in the “merit-based” system of awarding grants.
Like the tax dollars siphoned off through legislative earmarks, federal grant spending comes from discretionary funds written into the national budget.
One constant remains: Requests from powerful committee chairmen or party leaders are more likely to earn pork, while less prominent congressmen may go hungry.
Letter-marking can do no more than nudge an agency toward funding an initiative, and bureaucrats are more likely to pay attention to the lawmakers who hold their agency's purse strings.
In letters obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2007, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid implored Dirk Kempthorne, then secretary of the Interior, to support pet projects in Reid's home state of Nevada, such as a $200,000 "science center" in the Mojave Desert.
Reid signed the bottom of his hand-written note with a personal invitation for Kempthorne to "Call if I can ever help."
Reid penned some of his letters to various agencies just days after boasting the new Democratic majority had cleaved all earmarks from Republican drafts of the $463.5 billion spending bill Congress ultimately passed that year.
The projects Reid and others letter-marked in the months following the "earmark-free" spending bill's passage were the same ones Democrats proudly eliminated.
In a letter obtained by Citizens Against Government Waste and shared with the New York Times in 2010, Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk wrote the Department of Education requesting funds "needed to support students and educational programs" in a local school district.
Then-Rep. Kirk was one of many Republicans to vote against President Obama's 2009 stimulus bill, a move Kirk touted during his campaign for the Senate seat he now occupies.
Woodland School District 50, which falls inside what was then Kirk's congressional district, later received more than a million stimulus dollars.
One way congressmen can give weight to their letters and calls is to push for more money for the agency they hope will fund their project, then strongly recommend the agency spends some of that extra cash in their district.
The new practice has had unintended consequences on the Hill. Legislative earmarks were once a powerful negotiating tool among congressmen, allowing elected officials to legally bribe and coerce each other into passing bills that contained substantive measures.
Some have argued that stripping Congress of its ability to earmark discretionary spending has contributed to the gridlock from which it suffers today.
While most earmarks were tiptoed onto legislation in committee, they were still a matter of public record.Today's letter-marks are rewarded behind closed executive branch doors, and often by officials who have never once stood for election.
But earmarks emanating from the White House aren't just being used to buy constituent votes.
Presidentially appointed bureaucrats can pressure federal agencies to direct funds to certain congressional districts in an attempt to effectively "buy" their representative's vote on contentious legislation.
A Heritage Foundation analysis of grants issued during the 111th Congress revealed significant spikes in the amount of federal funds sent to the districts of moderate Democrats around the times Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and "cap-and-trade" emissions regulations came up to vote.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/earmar...rticle/2553967
