Scan the list of the 330 members of Congress who voted last week against Rep. Mark Souder’s amendment requiring the Pentagon to grade how much earmarks in defense spending bills actually help the U.S. military. Lots of familiar names from both parties are on that list, including the incoming speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Therein lies a fundamental truth about American government today — career politicians in both major political parties are the biggest obstacle to needed reform. They have little, if any, incentive to vote for changes like the Souder amendment because such changes threaten their ability to profit off the system.
The earmarks issue of 2006 shows why.
Earmarks are inserted by anonymous members of Congress in spending bills ordering a federal department or agency to spend tax dollars on a particular project in a specific time and place. Thereis no prior public debate about the earmark’s worthiness, no competitive bidding or ethics requirements in its awarding and no accountability for the results.
A decade ago, the typical annual spending bill had 100 or so earmarks.
Today, there are thousands in spending bills, worth billions of dollars.
Members of both parties simply cannot resist the opportunity to take our tax dollars and anonymously give them to favored donors, family members, staff aides, favored special interests or anybody else they please. And we haven’t even mentioned the plethora of tax benefits members insert into legislation.
In the decades prior to the Civil War, it was not uncommon for more than half of the entering members of Congress to be freshmen and few of them remained in government for the rest of their lives. The concept of career politicians was, for the most part, foreign to the nation’s political ethos. Now, since the judicial wing of the political class blocked term limits during the Clinton administration, citizens interested in fundamental reform must think in terms of constitutional amendment.
