What Do You Mean Earmarks Aren't Evil?

The National Journal's Johnathan Rauch actually does some reporting and investigating about earmarks and come to find out shockingly they aren't evil and will not ruin the world as we know it.

Naturally, when a gigantic omnibus appropriations bill came to the Senate floor last week, 98 percent of it got almost no attention. "Member projects -- aka earmarks or 'pork' -- account for less than 2 percent of spending in the $410 billion omnibus bill on the floor of the Senate this week, but they're drawing most of the opposition fire," The Christian Science Monitor reported. Less than 2 percent! Of course, this orgy of waste offended me for the same reason it offended everyone else: I was not getting an earmark.

I decided to get an earmark. Seemed easy enough. Just call someone in a congressional office, make a silly request -- propose converting pig vomit into drywall, that sort of thing -- and voila, I would have my very own "pet project."

So I called my congressman, Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., who, handily enough, is a member of the Appropriations Committee. Imagine my shock when I got a staffer who insisted that I would have to apply.

Apply? For a pet project? Right. There was a form. As in, paperwork. The exact form would depend on which Appropriations subcommittee has jurisdiction. And I would need to meet with legislative aides to explain why my project deserved funding. And they would probably vet my request with the relevant federal agency.

Oh. But then I'm in, right?

Not quite. Moran told me he will get a thousand earmark applications this year. "It actually goes up every year." He will accept only the best hundred or so.

But then I'm in?

No, then the relevant Appropriations subcommittee further whittles the list. About three dozen of Moran's earmarks will get funded, he figures.

So my chances of scoring boodle were on the order of only 3 percent.

Say it not so! Only 3 percent? Well we didn't have earmarks before so surely this is just some scheme to get money to the members of Congress' states.

When former Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., entered Congress in 1985, "there were no earmarks," he told me recently. Perhaps, you say, this was because appropriators were indifferent to how much federal money flowed to their districts? Sorry, bad guess.

In those days, according to Kolbe (an Appropriations Committee member who retired in 2007), appropriators felt little need to write earmarks into law. Instead, subcommittee chairmen and ranking members just dropped money into program accounts. Then they called up executive branch bureaucrats with advice on how to spend it.

Hmmm so they still sent the money back home they just didn't go through the process of vetting where the money might go. Maybe the old way wasn't so good after all. Buh buh buh but still the media has been talking about earmarks for two years now ever since John McCain started railing against them. There has to be a lot wrong with the process!

On its heels, however, came reform, notably in the last couple of years. Every earmark request now must be made public before Congress votes on it. The sponsoring member, the amount and nature of the request, and the name and address of the beneficiary must all be disclosed. You can find all this stuff online. As I was miffed to discover, many congressional offices have formalized the application procedure. Getting an earmark now is a lot like applying for a grant.

As transparency has taken over, the case against earmarks has melted away. Their budgetary impact is trivial in comparison with entitlements and other large programs. Obsessing about earmarks, indeed, has the perverse, if convenient, effect of distracting the country from its real spending problems, thus substituting indignation for discipline.

Dang I have just about used up all the bullets in my gun against earmarks. Well why doesn't President Obama just make Congress stop doing earmarks anyway?

And if you think Congress is parochial, take it up with Mr. Madison. He wrote the Constitution, which says, in terms that leave no room for quibbling, that the power of the purse belongs to Congress. The Founders' notion was that accountability to local voters was the best safeguard for the people's money. "The idea that unless something is in the president's budget Congress shouldn't consider it turns the Constitution on its head," Kolbe says.

Argh. Ok well I heard this one on Tee Vee last week. If earmarks are not a big problem then why aren't we allowed to hear all about them just like we do on other parts of spending bills? Answer that smarty pants!

And earmark spending today is, if anything, more transparent, more accountable, and more promptly disclosed than is non-earmark spending. Indeed, executive agencies could stand to emulate some of the online disclosure rules that apply to earmarks.

snip

Reformers who want to ban earmarking might think again. "You're never going to abolish earmarks," Moran says. "What you'll wind up abolishing is the transparency, the accountability." If unable to earmark, legislators will inveigle executive agencies behind the scenes, fry bureaucrats at hearings, and expand or rewrite entire programs to serve parochial needs. This, of course, is the way things worked in the bad old days. "I think you'll wind up going back to that system," Kolbe cautions.

Well hell what should I think the next time John McCain gets on Tee Vee and complains about earmarks then?

Next time you come across someone who looks at a giant federal spending bill and sees only the 2 percent that happens to be earmarked, tell that person to get over it.

Are you paying attention David Gregory?

(h/t Larison)