Each year, taxpayers are rightly disturbed by local and national headlines touting the latest example of Congressional earmarks that squander their tax dollars. Even with reforms enacted last year that require members of Congress to publicly “claim” their own earmarks, the system still suffers from a lack of accountability, transparency, and oversight. This is unacceptable. Every dollar irresponsibly spent by Congress is a dollar diverted from national priorities such as paying down the debt, providing better health care, ensuring that our nation’s veterans get the befits they deserve, and improving our education system.
Fixing the earmarks mess is not a problem that can be solved with the partisan blame game. Instead, we must forgo partisanship – even in an election year — and come up with a real solution that will stop the stubborn and sometimes indefensible spending of your money.
Earmarks have the power to seduce lawmakers into supporting frivolous spending, such as using your tax dollars to build pet projects, and this is how the earmark system can lead to corruption. Oftentimes members agree to look the other way in criticizing implausible projects in order to protect their own projects from the chopping block. Having witnessed the problems with this system firsthand, we both decided to take at least a year time-out on requesting earmarks, until we can agree on additional major reforms, and we are urging our colleagues to join us.
The Congressional addiction to earmarks has exploded in the last few years. According to the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, there were only 958 earmarks in the 1996 federal budget. Recent data from the Office of Management and Budget shows the earmark peak came less than a decade later, in 2005 with 13,492 earmarks – an increase of more than 1,000%. While that number decreased in 2007 as Congress sought to reform the process and cut back on the volume of earmarks, overall spending on earmarks increased from $18 billion in 2005 to $21 billion in 2007.
While we may sometimes differ in our opinion on how to spend tax dollars, we both agree that much of the $21 billion dollars in earmarks are wasted on pork barrel projects such as the “bridge to nowhere,” personal monuments named after members of Congress, and countless other boondoggles promoted by lobbyists and special interests.
This is not wise use of taxpayer money – and only adds to our fiscal problems as we struggle to control the ballooning budget deficit and national debt.
Last year we became the only two members of the Colorado delegation to publicly disclose our earmark requests. It is clear that this type of sunshine and disinfectant are the best cure to some of the more outrageous earmark requests made by Members of Congress. The practice of burying pet projects deep within complex legislation is at least inappropriate, at most deceitful and can serve as a cover for those who promote wasteful and otherwise unsupportable requests.
Our budgeting process must be more transparent, with earmark proposals (not just earmarks received) linked with the lawmakers who request them, so the American public can better understand how their dollars are being spent and hold their elected officials accountable. We should also limit the number and dollar amounts of earmarks that can be requested – and granted.
We have proposed a one year moratorium on earmarks – longer if necessary- to push for these changes so urgently needed in the Congressional earmark system. Reforming the system will make it less susceptible to the corruption and abuses we have seen too much. Americans are tired of the broken system, and it is time to restore our citizens” faith in government. We are ready to lead by example.
U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican represents Colorado’s 4th Congressional District. U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Democrat, represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
