One of the worst decisions by the current Democratic congressional majority, and one of the main reasons it ought to be taken away, is the decision to restore earmarks. Republicans had wisely banned these specific-interest spending provisions after winning back the House majority in 2010. They need to do it again.
Unfortunately, members of both parties are already taking full advantage of this decision. Democrats and Republicans alike are securing and boasting about the millions in wasteful pork-barrel spending that they brought home to their own states and House districts in the spending bill they just sent up for President Joe Biden’s signature.
Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana offered a few examples of these earmarks in a video he tweeted out last week. “There are 4,000 earmarks in this bill, totaling over $8 billion,” said Daines. Among those he listed were $500,000 to promote “health equity” in pools in Yonkers, New York, and “$300,000 for a left-wing anti-gun group that thinks, and I’m quoting from their website, ‘the Second Amendment has long been a tool for white supremacy.’” He also pointed to $2 million set aside for George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication — not to study climate change, mind you, but to communicate about it.
Obviously, such toxic groups and other frivolous causes can still receive government funding, with or without earmarks. Some will argue that the ban on earmarks did not cause overall discretionary spending to go down anyway, so what’s the loss?
Others will argue that if lawmakers do not earmark funds for specific purposes, that allows the bureaucracy to decide how federal money is spent. In the 1990s, for example, funding for missile defense had to be forced upon President Bill Clinton through earmarks.
But both of these arguments miss the main point. It is the very process of earmarking that is the problem. The problem with earmarks is not that they increase spending — it is that they become the lubricant that greases the skids for bad legislation.
Imagine that, in exchange for their assent to changing Senate rules and abolishing the filibuster, President Biden had offered gigantic earmarks to those few Democrats with a conscience. This is how earmarks become, in effect, bribes using taxpayer funds.
A secondary concern is that they also give genuinely odious politicians something to brag about back home after betraying their constituents by voting for terrible, wasteful spending bills. Earmarks, as disgraced former Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham demonstrated, are also vectors of corruption. They can be traded for campaign contributions or even for literal bribe money.
Earmarks also shift the conversation about government spending in the wrong direction. When politicians claim that their earmark for a local institution is creating five local jobs, that’s something voters can see. It is harder to perceive how 25 jobs were lost because money was wasted on a silly earmark to promote a government-favored company or institution.
And as far as the missile defense example goes, such situations are exceedingly rare. It makes no sense to base rules on such a rare exception. If there is something similarly vital to national security, Congress can pass appropriate legislation for it without bastardizing the entire spending process.
If Republicans are smart, they will avoid jumping on this bandwagon and competing to be the party of frivolous spending. If they want to win back the majority, they will instead do what Daines did, highlighting the worst earmarks and campaigning on a pledge of getting rid of them once again.
