Every year Congress tells the Pentagon to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on projects that aren’t needed by the military. In recent years, Pentagon officials have been more aggressive about grading earmarks and telling the truth about whether they help or hurt the nation’s defense. Now four leading big earmarkers are trying to silence the Pentagon. The four are asking House colleagues to defeat an amendment by Rep. Mark Souder, R-IN, that requires the Secretary of Defense to prepare an annual report grading all earmarks inserted by Congress in defense spending bills. If the Souder amendment becomes law, every defense bill earmark would receive a grade between an A and an F, based upon how much it contributed to the military’s achievement of its mission. Obviously, if the Pentagon prepares a comprehensive report every year explaining whether every individual earmark helps or hurts the U.S. military, odds are excellent that a bunch of those earmarks will be cancelled. So two leading Democrats – Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, and Rep. Chet Edwards, D-TX, who is ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on military quality of life and veterans affairs – are joining two leading Republicans to oppose the Souder amendment. The Republicans are Rep. Bill Young, R-AK, the outgoing chairman of the House Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee, and Rep. Jim Walsh, R-NY, outgoing chairman of the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on military qualify of life and veterans affairs. Murtha and Young are especially identified as champions of the anonymous, unaccountable earmarks process that has exploded in the past five years. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, the chief congressional enemy of earmarks, calls them “the gateway drug” to big spending addiction for Members of Congress. The Washington Examiner editorialized this year about the issue of Congress demanding the Pentagon spend money on unneeded projects and programs via earmarks.
