To Earmark or Not To Earmark
Over the weekend, Ricochet member Lucy Pevensie began a thread on earmarks. Even as stoutly conservative a figure as Sen. Inhofe of Oklahoma, she noted, had called earmarks a "phony issue." Now the Wall Street Journal editorial board has weighed in:
On earmarks, the House GOP leadership has rallied behind a ban, and 11 of 13 newly elected Republicans in the Senate—including Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul—campaigned against these special- interest spending projects that are typically dropped into bills with little debate or scrutiny. A Senate earmark moratorium is sponsored by veterans Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) and Jim DeMint (South Carolina) and newly elected Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire).
They are meeting resistance from the older generation of GOP leaders who define earmarks as synonymous with the Constitutional power of the purse. The otherwise conservative Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is a particular earmark defender, as is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who recently said that "this debate [on earmarks] doesn't save any money, which is why it's kind of exasperating"....
The Senators have a point about their Constitutional role, but they're ignoring the current political context and their own recent history. Republicans helped to create the public backlash against earmarks because of their own bad behavior the last time they ran Congress.
The Journal goes on to note that between 1994, when the GOP captured the House for the first time in four decades, to 2005, the year before voters gave the House back to the Democrats, earmarks multiplied from 1,500 to just under 14,000. (The Journal might have added that back in the old days, when Reagan was president, even in big appropriations bills the number of earmarks seldom broke double digits.)
My own view? The constitutional point is important--indeed, critical. Republican legislators face a hostile federal bureaucracy, and earmarks represent one of the few tools with which they can assert the rightful role of Congress, telling the bureaucrats, in effect, "You will spend money on this, not undermine us by spending money on that." Over the long term, then, I'd adopt the Oyen Rule, which I've named after Ricochet member Duane Oyen, who proposed it on Lucy's thread: Make all earmarks completely transparent, requiring each member of Congress who proposes one to post a statement explaining why, and then give the public a week or ten days to raise a ruckus, if it wishes, before submitting the earmark to a vote.
But that's for the long term. For now? Since the GOP went on an earmark bender, it needs to swear off earmarks altogether between now and 2012.
That's my view. And, on the theory that Lucy raised an issue that merits not just the quiet attention of a Sunday afternoon but the fresh energies of Monday morning, permit me to ask: What's yours?
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Comments :
Aug '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
I agree with you.
Jul '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
The problem is not the Congressional right to earmark, placing certain funding beyond executive discretion to redirect, but the procedures and practices that have grown up around the mechanism. The last few years, the de facto procedure has arisen where earmarks are subject to streamlined procedures that avoid or undermine committee and voting requirements, creating a high-pressure fire hose of pork in a-you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours spending orgy.
Both sides are so busy demagoguing the issue that it is earmarks themselves, not those easily changed Congressional rules, that are under fire. So far, the debate has been very disingenuous on both sides with everyone I've seen burning credibility while stoking the "debate".
May '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
Maybe congress should dismantle the bureaucracy gone wild.
If earmarks are so inconsequential, so nothing, so minimal, why can't Inhofe do without them?
If earmarks are such a non-issue, why not flip them as a little tidbit to the people clamoring for them, you know, the people who put the Republicans back in the majority in the House?
Inhofe and McConnell would do well to note that nobody is immune to a primary challenge.
May '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
I'm on board with the earmark ban. Senator McConnell has a point, but he's not seeing the whole field. If the Congress bans earmarks, he is right that federal bureaucrats will spend the money in some off-the-wall projects that we cannot even begin to imagine. The plus side for conservatives going into the 2012 presidential election is that now the fiscal responsibility spotlight can shift focus to the executive. We have been complaining for years that the growth of the bureaucracy is a threat to liberty and the Constitutional order - what better way to bring that bureaucracy to heel than to have real world examples of why we need a conservative president with a serious understanding of unified executive authority to come in and drain the swamp?
Edited on Nov 15, 2010 at 9:20amMay '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
This has always been a popular subject for grandstanding- when I was young, the outrage was on the left, in the form of Sen. Proxmire. He, incidentally, (trivia time!) was also the first Senator to get a hair transplant; at least it wasn't inserted into the HHS appropriation with a logical sounding title.
But despite my preferred approach (thank you, Mr. Robinson), I don't really see why you can't adopt a 2 year moratorium for the GOP Senate caucus, because we are in the minority anyway, and don't get a lot out of the process, to be cynical about it.
I don't see Harry Reid giving up the new Searchlight Federal Memorial Casino parking lot, justified as a national defense necessity in case a Nellis AFB jet needs to find a place to settle for a day. The temporary ban offers more valuable electoral meat than grabbing a few bieces of crumbled bacon in the 2011 appropriation Christmas tree Bill.
Meanwhile they can have the Sunlight Rule studied by the Senate Republican Policy committee (note that RPC chair Sen. Thune is not historically an earmark opponent, but he is also considering a presidential run....)
Jun '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
The most insidious aspect of earmarks is not the cost of the project or even the cumulative cost of all earmarked projects, the federal budget can likely afford the comparatively light load. The problem with earmarks is that they are used to buy votes that enact bad legislation. The health care bill is the most egregious recent example.
Aug '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
A. ban the earmarks and b. defund the bureaucracy once the Republicans have regained complete control of congress, largely as a result of doing A.
Oct '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
The constitutional point is a complete red herring! McConnell apparently thinks tea party conservatives will fall for any argument that has the Constitution attached to it. Congress already has all the tools it needs to direct spending -- and hold the Executive Branch accountable.
It's not the dollars. It's the corruption! It's Congressmen bribing each other and their own constituents for votes.
There's no substantive difference between everyday earmarks and buying Senators off to pass Obamacare or trading favors for campaign funds. Such practices disfigure and undermine the very legislation Congress writes, and thus pervert the rule of law itself.
Aug '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
Earmarks are not inconsequential, nor is the appropriate use of the Congressional power of the purse. It is perfectly appropriate to set aside funds for specific purposes, but rhetorical redefining of Earmarking aside it isn't appropriate to set aside pork projects during reconciliation or without formal debate.
There should be no earmarks as commonly understood. There should be specific project and expenditure proposals drafted as legislation and voted upon individually.
Any argument regarding the bureaucracy and the "need" to fund specific projects is obfuscatory rhetoric that would make Gorgias proud. Though those that have read the Gorgias know that Gorgias comes to regret how his tools are used.
Underlying the "need" for earmarks is a belief that we "need" the federal government to fund these projects at all, and a rejection of truly conservative principles. If the expenditure merits appropriation, then it merits public and open debate on the merits. Every Federal expenditure should be done openly and with deliberative process. Expenditures should not be offered as "sugar" to sweeten large omnibus bills.
Nov '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
A caller to Dennis Miller's radio show put it best in response to Rep. Thaddeus McCotter which is rather appropriate to McConnel's point. McCotter pointed out to Miller that not all earmarks are wasteful bridges to nowhere; some of them do go to worthy causes which the American people (barring night-watchman-state libertarians, of course) would be perfectly fine with.
The caller pointed out that if that were true, those expenditures should be able to pass on their own merits.
Edited on Nov 16, 2010 at 12:02amOct '10
Re: To Earmark or Not To Earmark
Oy. I voted for both Senators Inhofe and Coburn. I side with Dr. Coburn on this one. Earmarks embody the lack of transparency and process over which Americans have smacked Congress. Kill the corruption. Choke the bureaucracy. Free our grandchildren.