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February 11, 2006BELTWAY BLOGROLL
Tempest In A Barrel
Reprinted with permission from the Feb. 11, 2006, issue of National Journal magazine.
By David Baumann
For $495, an outfit called TheCapitol.Net will teach you how to feed at the trough. The firm, which does training seminars on how Washington works, is offering a one-day course on how to get an earmark. If you sign up, the folks at TheCapitol.Net will even teach you how to counter "public criticism of pork."
Like the Redskins and Beltway snarls, earmarks have become part of Washington. A whole lobbying community has grown up around this relatively new form of pork. Members of Congress now routinely direct appropriations to specific projects, with amounts of money attached. Constituents have come to expect members to bring home the bacon -- and to brag about it afterward. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., a co-founder of the anti-spending Republican Study Committee, issued a news release in December touting the $500,000 that he got into the Transportation-Treasury bill to renovate the Memorial Coliseum in Marion, Ind. "Developing and assisting communities throughout Indiana's 5th Congressional District," Burton declared, "is one of my main responsibilities in Washington."
Suddenly, however, "public criticism of pork" is all the rage, and earmarks are the target. Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, R-Calif., resigned from the House and is going to prison for taking bribes to use appropriations bills to steer defense contracts to his corporate friends. Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to operating a favor factory that depended on getting members of Congress to help his clients in a variety of ways. Reformers have vowed to send earmarks the way of such other once-familiar Washington institutions as Duke Ziebert's restaurant and The Washington Star.
Critics argue that earmarks -- although a tiny part of the federal budget -- are unseemly and out of control. Lawmakers aren't allocating money based on need but on connections. "We believe that the process of earmarking undermines the confidence of the American public in Congress, because the practice is not open, fair, or competitive and tends to reward the politically well connected," Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., declared in a letter to colleagues last month.
President Bush called for "earmark reform" in his State of the Union address last month, "because the federal budget has too many special-interest projects." Several scholars at the Heritage Foundation have suggested banning earmarks outright. But because the Constitution gives Congress full power over appropriations, there is no way to directly prevent legislation from ordaining how federal funds should be spent. Lawmakers have offered a number of partial reforms, such as limiting the number of earmark requests, making them more public, and making members more accountable. Even members of the Appropriations committees, who are in general the most jealous defenders of their power to steer funding, have called for changes; they say they are in danger of being overwhelmed by their colleagues' demands for earmarks.
But earmarks are convenient. As party discipline decreases, congressional leaders can use earmarks to reward loyal members. So far, Bush has not vetoed any bill because of earmarks. And while new House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, doesn't ask for earmarks himself, he is not crusading against them. On the other side, local officials have become masters in manipulating the system to get their share of the pork.
One congressional analyst is skeptical that the brouhaha about earmarks will accomplish much. "Every new change has its flip side," said Lawrence Dodd, a professor of political science at the University of Florida and the author of a standard reference book, Congress Reconsidered. "There always are going to be ways to favor special groups. That's what the whole game is about." Congress should be spending its time investigating the misdeeds of individuals and groups, Dodd said, rather than reforming the practice of earmarks.
Pork-barrel politics isn't new. But as budget limits -- such as those imposed by the Gramm-Rudman rules of the 1980s -- tightened, people seeking money gradually learned to grab it sooner in the legislative process. They could not wait until a federal department or agency got the funds, because it might not get enough -- so they made sure that Congress told the executive branch exactly where to spend the money. Coburn and McCain contend that earmarks in appropriations bills grew from 4,126 in 1994 to 15,268 in 2005. With that growth, some have slipped by that might not pass the smell test, such as $100,000 for the Tiger Woods Foundation or $250,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame.
"They grew because members of Congress believed the appropriations bills represented the best way to get things through Congress," said James Dyer, the longtime Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Dyer is now a lobbyist at Clark and Weinstock, and his practice includes appropriations. He adds that party leaders have increasingly turned to earmarks as a way to enforce discipline. "Leadership has to have enough carrots in their arsenal," Dyer said. A political scientist agrees. "Leaders use pork-barrel projects to assemble the votes," Diana Evans, a political science professor at Trinity College in Connecticut and the author of the 2004 book Greasing the Wheels, told National Journal last year.
That power was on naked display in December 2001, as the House prepared for a showdown vote on trade legislation. Dyer, then Appropriations staff director, and then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, approached Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, with a piece of paper. Hinojosa had not taken a position on the bill. DeLay signed the piece of paper, shook hands with Hinojosa and left. Hinojosa voted for the bill and got an earmark (which everyone involved in the process later declined to identify) in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill.
Just last year, appropriators stood on the Senate floor and threatened revenge on senators who supported anti-earmark amendments that Coburn was offering on spending bills. If senators supported Coburn, the appropriators warned, their own projects could be in jeopardy. The appropriators said they would take names.
Such threats amount to "internal bribery," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. Earmarks are sometimes justified, he said, but he opposes using them to buy votes on legislation. "It turns the appropriations process into an ATM."
Reformers claimed a major victory last year when Congress agreed to rescind money for the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, had tucked into the massive highway reauthorization bill. The bridge was to connect the town of Ketchikan with Gravina Island, home to only 50 people. The $315 million set aside for the bridge was not returned to the pot of transportation money, but as Heritage Foundation scholar Ronald Utt notes, the money went to the state of Alaska to use for its transportation priorities. And when Gov. Frank Murkowski released his budget proposal last month, it included funding for the bridge.
Many members of Congress steadfastly defend earmarks, insisting that they know what is best for their districts and that they do not want to leave those decisions up to "green-eyeshade bureaucrats at OMB," in the words of House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
Earmarking has grown so prevalent that even groups lacking high-paid lobbyists have been forced to get into the act or risk losing their piece of the pie. "We were originally getting about $14 billion a year" in federal funds for specific projects, said Wes Watson, executive director of the Florida Public Transportation Association. That was far below what Florida should be getting based on its population. In 1998, he said, "we went up to Washington to get on the radar screen of our representatives and their staffs." In short, Watson said, the group was on the prowl for earmarks. By 2003, the association was bragging about its $36.9 billion in earmarks.
If earmarks were abolished, federal transit money would be distributed through formulas. "We would be willing to go into a formula program as long as we got our fair share," Watson said. But he doubts that earmarks will disappear. "I think they're going to be there forever," he said. "You might as well accept that fact."
The impact on federal programs is measurable. Take the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, which pays for projects at colleges and universities to encourage reform in higher education. In 1998, FIPSE received a total of $25.2 million, which included two earmarks accounting for some $4.5 million, according to figures compiled by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The rest was distributed through competitive grants. In 2005, the program received $163.6 million, with 419 earmarks directing where $146.2 million, or 89 percent of the funding, should go. Education Department officials canceled the competitive grant process in 2005, saying that the program did not have sufficient funding to make awards.
For fiscal 2006, appropriators -- short of money to fund programs -- eliminated all earmarks from the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. FIPSE funding fell to about $22 million, close to what it had been getting in 1998, when earmarking made up 18 percent of the program's funding. Now the department has revived the competitive grant process. For fiscal 2007, Bush is seeking $22 million for FIPSE, the same as it got last year.
Congressional proposals to reform the earmarking process generally try to respect Congress's power of the purse while relying on "transparency" and internal rules to tamp down temptation. It's been common practice, for example, for lawmakers to slip earmarks that have not been considered by either chamber into conference reports at the last minute. Senate Rules Committee Chairman Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have endorsed a plan by Coburn and McCain that would prohibit the Senate from considering any provision in a conference report that had not been part of a House or Senate bill.
Meanwhile, McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., have proposed a requirement that earmarks be placed in the text of legislation rather than in the committee reports that accompany bills. Under current practice, committee reports direct federal departments and agencies to spend money on particular earmarks -- and the agencies have learned that congressional appropriators will retaliate if their instructions aren't followed.
Requiring earmarked projects to be part of actual legislation would make it easier for legislators to challenge them by offering amendments. It also would, however, require the president to approve every earmark -- even the porky ones. The president does not sign committee reports, so he does not now directly approve earmarks. He does sign bills. Including earmarks in legislation also would preclude federal departments from attempting to "reprogram" earmarked money, as they sometimes do.
Presidents have railed against earmarks in the past, to little avail. President Carter found his entire agenda threatened because he vowed to ignore designations for water projects. This year, Bush's budget simply states that there is a public perception that earmarks are out of control and that he will work with Congress to reform the process. He also asks lawmakers to restore the line-item veto, which Congress granted to President Clinton in 1996 but the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional.
Rep. Lewis has his own set of recommendations. He would like to sharply limit the number of earmarks that members can submit. (The House Appropriations Committee received almost 35,000 requests last year.) He wants to require that each request be submitted in writing and included in the Congressional Record. Lewis also wants to ensure that the earmark rules apply to other committees. The Appropriations Committee is not the only panel that deals with earmarks. The huge transportation reauthorization bill contained thousands of earmarks, and tax bills often include targeted tax breaks that some consider to be earmarks.
Flake scoffs at those proposals. "The problem isn't an unwillingness by members to identify themselves with their earmarks -- just read their press releases -- it's the inability of any other members to challenge the spending."Short of reform legislation, critics hope that publicity will be sufficient to embarrass porky congressmen. In recent years, McCain and Flake have begun issuing statements to highlight what they consider to be egregious earmarks. But given the choice between being embarrassed or disappointing the folks back home, members of Congress generally like to keep their constituents happy.
Lewis disputes the contention that a huge scandal lurks behind the earmarking process. "You can't protect yourself from people who are dishonest," he said, referring to Cunningham. "Because one member of Congress took a bribe doesn't mean that every member of Congress is a crook."
One House Republican aide pointed out that while the Cunningham case involves earmarks, the much broader Abramoff scandal doesn't center on appropriations bills. Dyer predicts that at the end of the day, Congress will limit the number of earmarks in funding bills and will take some action to require members to identify themselves with specific project requests. But the University of Florida's Dodd said he worries that imposing arbitrary limits on earmarks would do more harm than good; sometimes, he said, earmarks are the best way to address a local problem.
Presumably, if you take the course offered by TheCapitol.Net, you'll learn how to get an earmark without having to bribe someone. If you successfully complete the class, you can earn 0.6 continuing education credits from Virginia's George Mason University. And who knows? If you convince someone in the Virginia delegation to earmark federal funds for a new building on campus, maybe they'll give you a full credit.
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Tracked on February 12, 2006 02:16 PM
