I'll wager you've got a firm position on earmarks. Sen. Jim DeMint assumes you do and that he has the winning ground for the upcoming battle. Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell has got an uphill fight from a clearly unpopular place. DeMint wants to eliminate the practice of earmarking legislation. McConnell wants to preserve the status quo.
Who could argue in favor of setting aside money for a particular Congress-critter to smoke and cure as a Christmas ham for his district? It seems outrageous in these times of huge deficits and soaring national debt.
But is it?
Let's be sure we understand what we've got and what we want before we act too quickly.
All expenditures of federal funds come by way of an appropriations bill. We've earlier had an authorization for the various agencies of government to act. Step two is when the money to support the actions is appropriated. Congress proposes to spend a pot of money on something. That is a done deal.
Earmarks then are a slicing and dicing of the appropriation pie. They are NOT an additional expenditure. Cutting out the practice of earmarking will not save a single penny. It is spent money and is simply being set aside to be spent at a particular place for a specific purpose (which may be getting Congress-critter Capone re-elected.)
Let's say Congress appropriates $100 for lunch. That would let the administration decide who gets what for the noon meals, up to $100 total. But Senator Batbum earmarks $5 for a cheeseburger and Congresswoman Placenta wants $5 for a Subway foot-long. Now there are only $90 left, but the total expenditure is still just $100.
In the absence of earmarks, the government agency with overall responsibility for the program in question would prioritize and spend the money where it was most needed and most effective...in a perfect world.
But we don't live in a perfect world. The administration is politically motivated as much as the earmarking Senators. Give them the whole kaboodle and the money will go to reward political supporters, campaign contributors, union activists, etc.
So, should we eliminate earmarks? I'm sympathetic to the idea because it smacks of patronage and corruption. Elected officials are more often than not venal and self-serving. They use earmarking to cement their incumbency.
Yet, if we do eliminate earmarks we haven't saved a cent. Have we rendered our spending more efficient or productive? In the current climate I seriously doubt that the bureaucracy is any better to objectively allocate those dollars than the elected officials.
We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. So, on the question of earmarks, I respond, "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn."
4 comments:
Well, anything that strips power from a legislator is a good thing, in my mind.
wv: remount Well, yeah. Welcome to the new violation, same as the old . . .
Having spent an eternity (an assignment) at the Pentagon, I have to challenge one assertion in your example. Earmarks do cost money. Program Managers KNOW that Congress, both Elected and Staffers are going to earmark their program. Therefore, to preserve what they need for their programs, they pad what they're budgeting to allow for some to get stripped away. If less than that goes, so much the better. Any program can find a use for more money.
I got the dreaded phone call one afternoon while I was manning the office during lunch. I got told I needed to find $10 million by one o'clock because the President and his assistant President (she might have the same name as a Secretary of State) were visiting Washington State and wanted to bestow some largess on the populace. Earlier in the year, during the Congressional hearings for one of the programs I was assigned, the staffer took $5 mil and the Program Manager didn't bat an eye. Later I asked him why he didn't fight it. He said, "I thought it would be $15M." So when this call came in, I knew where to find the money. Handled the paperwork, and went home to try and assuage my conscience with an adult libation or a few. Monday dawns bright and early, I'm the first one in the office and the phone's ringing. I answer it and the person on the other line says, "Colonel Juvat, this is General XXX." I think "Yeah right!" But discretion.... "Yes sir?" "When would it be convenient for you to stop by my office for a chat?" The heart stops. "Would five minutes be convenient, Sir?"
Now this General was not associated with any of my programs as far as I knew, so my little action on Friday was forgotten. In fact, he was in charge of Personnel, so there was a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, me and the slippery bonds would see each other again.
Walked in to the outer office, and I could see from the look of sympathy on the secretary's face, that I was a dead man walking. I reported in to the General and the first thing I notice is the 4 shining stars on his hat. He'd gotten promoted and taken over Stratcom (AKA, the people I'd taken the money from). He asked me why I'd taken the money from HIM, of all people. When I relayed the information I reported above, he paused for the longest 10 seconds of my life and said "Good Take, Don't ever let it happen again."
So, Ed, while your assertion that earmarks don't increase the budget is technically true in that the total budget amount is unchanged, there are two costs associated with it.
First, the earmark padding. Second, the heartbeats lost by the action officers that have to make them happen.
Shear the shylocks of Congressional semantics!
Let's face it: 'earmarks' are just a convenient way for a Congress critter (or Soros' Tides Foundation, in the case of Obamacare) to hide building a federally-funded tea-pot or gourd museum in his hometown, among a great deal of Really Important Stuff.
I'd rather see the House require an _individual_ bill (named "Earmark #nn of Representative Smith) describing and justifying each pound of bacon being removed from the taxpayer's purse. (Similar to the so-called "private bills" honoring some home-district soul for something or other... and usually passed by unanimous agreement).
The point: to shine some long-overdue light upon those who abuse the system.
And of course, if the administration controls it all, they will inevitably spend too much on X, and not have enough left for Y, and so they have to appropriate more money to cover the difference....
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