posted Despite the rhetoric, Congress continues to pour money into earmarks
Fri, 02/19/2010 - 4:02pm | posted by Jason Pye
We’ve all heard that Democrats were going to usher in a new era of transparency and that Barack Obama was going to do something about earmarks, pet projects that aren’t vetted the same way as general spending. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that neither one of these has happened, in fact, spending on earmarks increased in the last fiscal year:
Congressional reformers contend that they corrupt the process, and President Obama has vowed to sharply reduce them. But Congress devoted nearly $16 billion to lawmakers’ pet projects in their home states and districts last year — a slight increase in funding over the previous year, although the number of earmarks decreased.
For fiscal 2010, Congress included 9,413 earmarks in the annual appropriations bills that fund the federal government, down from 10,363 in 2009, according to a report released Wednesday by Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent watchdog dedicated to rooting out waste. Those earmarks accounted for $15.9 billion, up from $15.6 billion the previous year, the group found. That represents less than 2 percent of overall spending appropriated by Congress each year.
Earmarks actually account for over 2 percent of non-defense discretionary spending, which the president has pledged to freeze for three years. By the way, Obama has requested plenty of pork projects of his own for FY 2011.
There are two issues with earmarks. You have the constitutional issues as most of the spending does not meet the charge of Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. In fact, President James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, vetoed the Bonus Bill of 1817 on the following grounds:
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
The second reason to oppose earmarks is, as mentioned before, they are not subject to sunlight or proper vetting, such as cost/benefit analysis, nor do they go through a bidding process. They are reserved to preserve re-election for members or to give to politically connected friends, this is the reason Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) called them the “currency of corruption.”
Despite all the fluff from President Obama, nothing has changed in regards to the process, nor will it change.
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