Voters disgusted by the Republican-controlled Congress’ practice of stuffing massive amounts of political pork into appropriations bills likely won’t find much relief if the Democrats take control in November. In fact, according to local eight-term Congressman Jim Moran, D-Va., the force-feeding could get worse. Here’s what Moran reportedly told the Arlington County Democratic Committee’s Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner: “When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the @*#& out of it.”
A May 3 report by the nonprofit Citizens Against Government Waste defines “earmarks” as unauthorized, noncompetitive expenditures that have been requested by just one member of Congress and have not been subjected to congressional hearings, performance standards or even standard disclosure requirements. There’s a reason they’re usually slipped into major spending bills at the last minute.
Earmarks are nothing new. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. — himself named CAGW’s December “Porker of the Month” — was correct when he said “they’ve been going on since we were a country.” Indeed, a 1796 letter written by Thomas Jefferson to James Madison warned about a “scene of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State … .”
But Reid was way off base when he also declared there was “nothing wrong” with deliberately circumventing congressional budget procedures specifically intended to protect taxpayers from being ripped off by rapacious special interests.
The scramble Jefferson warned about is now a complete free-for-all. The CAGW report notes that earmarks have increased 872 percent since 1995 and now consume up to $29 billion annually. The Congressional Research Service found 15,268 earmarks last year alone — an average of 28 for each and every member of Congress.
Earmarks — and the political corruption they represent — would make a perfect campaign issue for an opposition party intent on recapturing Congress this year. Unfortunately, Democrats like Reid and Moran don’t see anything wrong with the shoddy practice itself — just the fact that the Republican majority is in a position to dole out most of the pork, not them. Instead of promising to shut down the all-you-can-eat buffet, Democrats would just serve a different set of diners.
Although intense public pressure has forced Senate conferees to reluctantly agree to remove most of the excess (originally $16 billion worth) their colleagues larded onto the emergency appropriations bill to pay for the Iraq war and hurricane relief efforts, earmarks themselves won’t disappear until voters demand a permanent end to such wanton gluttony at their expense — and then back it up at the ballot box.
