Unemployment, financial crises and Pork!
More than 11,000 “earmarks,” worth nearly $15 billion in all, were slipped into legislation telling the government where to spend taxpayers’ money this year, keeping the issue at the center of Washington’s culture of money, influence and politics. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said lawmakers could not possibly know what they were approving in the hastily completed spending bill, packed with “unnecessary, wasteful, run-of-the-mill pork barrel projects” amounting to “a slush fund for the appropriators.” In a lengthy statement submitted for the Congressional Record this week, McCain warned: “It will be a long time before all of the hidden provisions in this legislation are exposed.”
Congress has asked the Justice Department to investigate Alaska GOP Rep. Don Young’s $10 million earmark for a Florida highway interchange sought by a developer who gave him campaign contributions. Former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., is embroiled in an investigation of earmarks for clients of lobbyist Bill Lowery, a former GOP congressman, who also have been generous campaign donors to Lewis. Once limited to the most senior and powerful lawmakers, or those on the Appropriations and Transportation committees, earmarking pet projects and grants mushroomed after Republicans took over Congress in 1995.
Estimates vary, but earmarks went from more than 1,300 projects worth nearly $8 billion in 1994 to a peak of nearly 14,000 projects worth more than $27 billion in 2005, according Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that opposes the practice.
Rep. Jim Walsh, R-N.Y., contrasts today’s earmarking culture to what existed before that. Most of the pet projects went to a small clique of spending barons headed by Appropriations chairmen like the late Rep. Jamie Whitten, D-Miss., who used to call up Cabinet officials to order up earmarks.
“We democratized it,” Walsh said. “We basically said, ‘We’re going to make this available to all the members.’”
But demand for earmarks skyrocketed, and more and more lobbying firms sought to buy in.
Democrats say they are cutting earmarks by more than 40 percent below the 2006 budget bills passed when Republicans ran Congress. As important, they say, are House and Senate reforms requiring sponsors of earmarks to disclose them. That’s made it easier for watchdog groups, reporters and the public to track the flow of lobbying influence and money. A Web site run by Taxpayers for Common Sense details earmarks, and one run by the Center for Responsive Politics tracks lobby registrations and campaign contributions.
Things may be changing. This year, freshman Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., gave back about $14,000 in contributions from people who had requested earmarks. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, told the AP that starting next year he’s going to stop asking for earmarks benefiting private companies. Few, however, expect the pay-to-play system to shut down.
“Hiring a lobbyist to try to get you an earmark is a pretty good investment, because you can get a 10-, 20-, 30-fold return without frankly all that much work,” said Anthony Nownes, a political scientist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “It’s a such a win-win situation for everybody. The legislator gets to tell his or her constituent that he or she quite literally brought home the bacon, the lobbyist gets to tell his or her client that they did the same thing, and the constituents get all the goodies.”
Tags: pork barrell spending
