U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall is a Georgia Democrat and a member of his party’s Blue Dog Coalition, a group of lawmakers bound by a desire to restrain federal spending. The Blue Dogs have something else in common: a fondness for funding pet projects.
Marshall alone requested more than $12 billion worth of the so-called earmarks in the 2010 federal budget. His proposals range from $388,850 to aid 14 local farmers markets to $4.2 billion to purchase C-17 heavy-lift transport aircraft.
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Overall, Blue Dogs submitted more than 2,500 individual earmarks totaling about $20 billion. That underscores the conflict between their eagerness to bring federal money home and the coalition’s criticism of the budget as laden with pork.
“It’s really hard to smack government’s wrists with the one hand while the other hand is looking for as much earmark cash as you can grab and bring home to your district,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based public-interest group.
Lawmakers insert earmarks in spending bills to fund specific projects or programs, usually without debate and, until recently, anonymously. The normal appropriations process calls for federal agencies to decide how to spend the money Congress allocates. Earmarks allow the lawmakers themselves to mandate where the funds go.
Formed after Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in 50 years, the Blue Dog Coalition organized around the idea that the party had moved too far to the left. The moniker reflects the feeling of some that their views had been “choked blue” by the Democrats’ liberal wing. The group today makes up almost 20 percent of the House Democratic membership.
Like many of the other 50 Blue Dogs in Congress, Marshall, 61, says that while he would support a ban on earmarks, he won’t swear them off until a prohibition is imposed.
“As long as they are going to have earmarks, I’m going to submit projects to get money,” Marshall, whose rural central Georgia district includes Robins Air Force Base, said in a telephone interview. “I’m not going to cause the folks in my district to miss out just to make a point.”
Neither is Rep. Michael Arcuri. The Blue Dog Democrat from Utica, N.Y., requested $11.5 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in Geneva, N.Y.
Reps. Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Walt Minnick of Idaho are the only Blue Dog members who don’t seek earmarks.
The White House is set to release its budget blueprint today. In the face of a record budget deficit, the Blue Dogs are demanding that Congress return to pay-as-you-go budgeting, a practice that requires lawmakers to offset increases in spending with budget cuts of equal value.
The Blue Dogs’ goal is to “restore fiscal discipline to this nation’s budgeting process,” said Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on March 20 projected that President Barack Obama’s budget would lead to a $1.85 trillion deficit this year.
Boyd, who said pay-go is the only way to rein in spending, argues that there’s no conflict between earmark requests and the group’s message of fiscal conservatism.
