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Earmark Myth – They Don’t Cost Any Money to Taxpayer

By: Brian Darling (Diary)  |  November 9th, 2010 at 07:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Americans are hearing the talking point that earmarks don’t cost the taxpayers any money.  This simply is not true.  Citizens Against Government Waste, a Congressional watchdog group, has put out a report on wasteful projects from Fiscal Year 2010.  They identify $16.5 billion in pork.

The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW’s annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The 2010 Pig Book identified 9,129 projects at a cost of $16.5 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2010. A “pork” project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.

A look at some of these projects shows that earmarking does lead to waste.  To say that $16.5 billion is not significant enough to address is not a valid talking point.  Just take a look at some of the projects identified by CAGW.

CAGW gives out Oinker awards for the most egregious pork projects and they gave the “The Dunder-head Mifflin Award” to Senators Specter and Kanjorski for a project in PA:

Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Representative Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) for $200,000 for design and construction of a small business incubator and multipurpose center in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Maybe proponents of earmarking will argue that $200,000 is a drop in the bucket, but it is easy to identify waste that was pushed by Members of Congress.  Where in the Constitution does it say that your tax dollars can be forcibly taken away from you then given to a “small business incubator” in Pennsylvania?  Conservatives know that the government is incapable of creating long term private sector jobs, so why are any members of Congress wasting your money on this special interest project.

CAGW gave the Hal Bent of Earmarking Award to Hal Rogers of Kentucky:

Representative Harold “Hal” Rogers (R-Ky.) for $10 million for the National Institute for Hometown Security.

It is even harder to argue that $10 million is a drop in the bucket.  The federal government has funded the Department of Homeland Security and states have taken it upon themselves to create homeland security departments and entities.  Why are federal dollars being funnelled to Kentucky in the name of homeland security?

CAGW gave the An Earmark Grows in Brooklyn Award to Representative Clarke of New York:

Representative Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) for $400,000 for construction and renovation for safety improvements at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

This one does not even pass the laugh test.  “Safety improvements” at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden seems outside the scope of the core functions of the federal government.  If conservatives are going to push for a limited federal government that only appropriates money for functions specifically authorized by the U.S. Constitution, where is the authorization in the Constitution for this project?

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) previewed the upcoming fight, within the Senate Republican Conference on a resolution to ban earmarks for this Congress below.  Coburn tells Red State:

We’ll never be trusted to be the party of less spending while we’re rationalizing more spending through earmarks.  Earmarks do nothing to hold the executive branch accountable.  In fact, earmarks are the gateway drug to spending addiction in Washington.  Major spending bills often pass because they contain earmarks.  Congress can hold the president accountable by conducting aggressive oversight and passing bills that spend less money. 

Senators Coburn and Jim DeMint (R-SC) are expected to force the Senate Republican Conference to vote on this matter next week — we shall see if the Republicans in Washington are listening to the Tea Party and other Americans who expressed an interest in cutting spending last week on Election Day.

Our own Erick Erickson has an excellent post published a few hours ago titled “No More Earmarxist” where he more specifically mapped out the state of play in the Senate on this issue.

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COMMENTS

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  • JadedByPolitics

    would be prepared to PRIMARY them in 2012. I think they must have forgotten the primary process where there were 2 or more begging to be the Republican candidate and those same people will be more then happy to have their chance to hear US!

  • frashure

    Earmarks don’t create greater spending, they only direct what is already appropriated.

    If you start with a $20B appropriations bill and add $14B worth of earmarks, you still only have a $20B bill.

    • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

      The practice encourages Members of Congress to treat the treasury as their own personal piggy bank; and that attitude slops over into and corrupts every other facet of Congressional practice.

      In other words, do not presume ignorance on our parts. Do you understand me? Indicate that you understand me in your next post.

    • Common_Cents

      I hope you are being sarcastic or are under the age of 16 and don’t know any better.

      Either taxpayer money is spent or it wasn’t. Either taxpayer money was wasted on crap government projects or it wasn’t. If it makes you feel better that it was appropriated anyway, why would you not care if it was wasteful earmark BS spending?

      • Scope

        Remember that Ron Paul always says that he earmarks as much as he can, because the money is already appropriated, and, by damn he is going to get as much of those dollars as he can for his state. That is at the same time that he rails against unnecessary spending. The House said that they had a moratorium on spending last year. Guess who broke that moratorium last year, Ron Paul In other words, I am going after the spending of the federal government, but, I’ll grab any dollars I can get.

    • Brian Darling

      The below sounds like $5 million that would not have been spent but for an earmark. Do you disagree Mr. “frashure”?
      http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-12-21/news/17350488_1_spending-bill-earmarks-defense-spending
      The Department of Defense didn’t ask for money to update the old officers club in San Francisco’s Presidio into a visitors information center and exhibition space. Neither did any other member of Congress – except House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
      Her $5 million earmark request for the Presidio Heritage Center was approved by the Senate on Saturday as part of the $626 billion defense appropriations bill, the largest of the end-of-year government spending measures.
      The bill, which includes $128 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, is expected to be signed by President Obama.

    • joecollins

      In your example,if the original appropriation for Agency XXX was $20B and they have $14B of slop . . . .cut the $14B of slop and use it to pay down the debt.

    • hertfordkc

      Further to Moe and Common-cents comments…
      What about all of the agreements to vote for legislation in exchange for attaching a few earmarks? In other words, a piece of bad legislation is made worse by throwing a few more earmarks into the trunk….

    • ss396

      to the politician who brought home the pork. In the Soviet Union this was called ‘personality cult’. Really proud to have all manner of edifices named after themselves, they are – while the locals just want to have the roads repaired and the municipal sewer system to stop leaking.

      I say it again and again: if they want to flog money around at the local level, then they should run for city council.

    • csinate

      Then why did the $787B appropriations bill when the earmarks were added went up to $820B?
      If you took away the earmarks, in your logic above, then all you’d need is a $6B appropriations bill. Who do you think pays for the $20B?

    • daune

      Because in the right government, you eliminate the pork, and decide that you actually only need a $6B appropriations bill.

      The point is to change the way we spend taxpayers’ money. Unless it is absolutely needed for an agreed upon transparent purpose, we let the person who earned it keep it.

  • maindependent

    If the $14 B of earmarks didn’t exist, the $20B appropriation would be for $6B. That’s also $14B we wouldn’t have to borrow or our kids and grandkids wouldn’t have to borrow. Looks as if some liberal/progressive math has sneaked in here.

    • The_Gadfly

      If Congress has allocated $20 B for Safety improvements from the Appropriations committee, and the Transportation committee earmarks $14 B, that leaves $6 B for unelected government workers to allocate as they see fit. Those same unelected government workers will still oversee the entire $20B expenditure, which is what was allocated by Appropriations. In this sense no money has been saved.

      Having said that, there are two overwhelmingly important issues that the hyper-technical view overlooks. I will start with what I regard as the lesser issue.

      The lesser issue is that earmarks don’t constitute even 10% of the federal budget. But they do constitute 100% of the grease that is used to get through bills that do constitute large percentages of the federal budget. The Corn Husker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase were relatively small pieces of pork, but they purchased the passage of a $787 B monstrosity Americans did not want. This is the sense in which earmarks DO increase government expenditures and the thing that Americans are most aware of.

      The larger issue is that whether or not the help balance the budget doesn’t matter. What matters is the American people have SPOKEN. They want earmarks GONE. NOW. No questions, just go DO IT. Maybe we’ll get buyers remorse later and go back to allowing earmarks. So long as it isn’t a SCOTUS decision or an amendment to the US Constitution, it is a relatively simple thing to undo later if we want to. But for the moment what we the American people most want to see is that Congress critters are doing what we sent them there to do.

  • Brian Darling

    And justify those projects. I dare you. There are three problems with earmarks:
    1. They increase the cost of legislation, because the appropriators tend to game the system to allow bills to pass way over the budgetary allocations.
    2. The compromise members efforts to cut waste, fraud and abuse on the part of the Administration, because they don’t have clean hands when pointing out fraud in the executive branch.
    3. They are corrupting. Many members trade earmarks on an appropriations bill for votes on other bills. The Medicare Prescription Drug benefit was bought with earmarks. That cost the taxpayers over $600 billion in the ten year budgetary window after the bill passed. Also, it is corrupting for members to secure an earmark, then that earmark recipient, and the recipients lobbyists, give money to the member’s campaign for re-election. Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was accused of enriching former staffers by funnelling earmarks to entities represented by her former staff. Those staffers then donated to the member. This is a revolving door of another flavor.

    • Scope

      is only designed to add monies to the coffers of incumbents. It’s a good thing that Perriello’s earmarks to UVA were not enough to get him re-elected.

  • LoveThatConstitution

    It’s not just the real cost of the earmarks themselves that are the problem but as I heard Jim DeMint explain, very logically, it is the fact that earmarks are used as congressional bribes where the true costs come in.

    http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/your-world-cavuto/transcript/sen-jim-demint-we-are-monetizing-our-debt

    Earmarks were the vehicles for the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase. These favors that get people to vote for devastatingly huge costs in money and liberty to the citizens is where the REAL problems arise.

    Get rid of this “gateway drug” for Congressmen and you get rid of a lot of the problems. Its a start and sure, if the argument against it is that its really not that much money, the response should be that it shouldnt be such a big deal then, should it?

  • hoosierteacher

    In one sense, they DON’T cost the taxpayers money. (Hear me out, I’m not arguing for earmarks).

    The money is already spent in the appropriation bill, and the earmark is only directing how a portion of that money has to be spent. The argument for earmarks is that a congressman from a district is determining how the money will be spent, instead of a nameless bureaucrat in DC. An earmark isn’t additional spending.

    For example, a bill appropriates 1 Mil, in spending for an energy bill, and 25,000 dollars of that gets earmarked for a windfarm in a small community.

    HOWEVER, I’m not advocating earmarks I and agree that they should be banned. But the argument that they cost money is not technicaly correct. In my opinion the better argument goes like this: Why should a military funding bill have earmarks to pay for funding an art festival in some town, or why should a bill appropriating money for federal law enforcement have a portion of the money appropriated to study cow flatulance? It’s a waste of money, but it is the total bill that should be reduced since the earmarked money has already been spent.

    • hoosierteacher

      I hadn’t read Frashure’s comment when I posted my comment (nor your reply). I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you were ignorant about how earmarks work, and I see from your reply to Frashure that you might take it that way.

      Many people who argue the point about earmarks DO think that earmarks are additional spending tacked on top of money already allocated (certainly not you). An informed reader of RS ought to know that there are plenty of arguments against earmarks, and that they DO represent wasteful spending. It’s just that I think folks ought to be informed that directing a portion of a bill towards a wasteful or non-germane project is where the waste figures in, and it is the overall size of the bill that is the problem. Cutting earmarks will certainly drop spending (since bills will shrink if they can’t be earmarked). But an educated reader benefits from knowing why this happens, and it doesn’t hurt to lay out how the process works.

      No disrespect intended.

      • The_Gadfly

        I suspect something else is afoot that as a moderator Moe sees and we don’t. One year and ten months with no posts and he opened with that remark. I looked at your record and see a bunch of posts all current. I think you’ll be fine.

      • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

        nt

  • Oz

    Let’s say that we start with $200 billion worth of money.

    If none of that money is earmarked and I go to congress and say “Let’s cut 10% of the money,” it’s not personal.

    If we have $160 billion worth of earmarks in the $200 billion and I say “Let’s cut 10% of the money,” it suddenly gets REALLY personal for a whole bunch of people.

    So I don’t buy that it doesn’t cost money to earmark.

  • gumbeaux

    I guess these legislators who serve the people think the people are STUPID! Catch this one STUPID, GET OUT OF OUR HOUSE BEFORE YOU ARE THROWN OUT!

  • napensnake

    Federalism implies a differentiation of powers between the central government and its constituent units (the states.) The U.S. Constitution describes a federal system. However, an honest study of the country today would make obvious the fact that we do not have a federal system. Grants and mandates have neutered state authority and limited it to those powers permitted by the national government. This is not federalism.

    A review of history would show that the states actually granted some authority to the central government. That has since changed radically.

    A lot of this problem came to pass following the ratification of the 17th Amendment. At that point, states lost their voice in the central government. To return some sanity to the system and appropriate authority to the states, we must repeal the 17th Amendment.

  • partyof1

    is it gives incumbents great power to get re-elected on top of the advantages that incumbents already have — greater visibility and name recognition, ect.

    While we may want some in Congress to get re-elected, it’s a corruption of the democratic process because voters’ judgments are skewed by what amounts to bribes instead of focusing on what the candidate did to reduce the size of government, or reduce taxes, lower crime rate, national security, ect. It’s no wonder RINO’s manage to hang on in so many states.

    Can anyone honestly say that earmarks are not vote buying?

  • walter

    is a bloated budget… if they are spending the lights out, No matter WHAT the money is appropriated for it’s TOO FAT. It is OVER spending. STOP the over spending and include “earmarks” for the chopping block – PERIOD!

    Don’t be duping us with catch phrases, and going after the female vote with “It’s good for the children” to try and get your “EARMARK” money… it’s not yours, IT’S OURS! And we don’t want it spent on BS!

  • streiff

    they have been involved in pay to play for some years. If you want your opponent’s project in the Pig Book it can be made to happen.
    http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2009/09/02/citizens-against-government-waste-and-payola/

  • runner12

    money is absolutely true given that the money that they are “appropriating” came directly from the taxpayer. Let’s be real, earmarks have turned into nothing more than a vote-buying gimmick to win re-election. Many of the earmarks are kickbacks to the people who helped get them elected. Why do you think they are hollering so much? If you look at some of the absolutely ridiculous things these earmarks go to, it will make you ill. There is absolutely NO logical argument for keeping them around.
    As an added note, I have to say that if Mr. Paul decides to not jump on board with banning earmarks, the people of Kentucky need to do some serious reminding of who put him in office and who can take him out of office.