WASHINGTON — Despite their claims, the Republicans’ ban on earmarks won’t stop lawmakers from steering taxpayers’ dollars to pet projects. And it will have little if any effect on Washington’s far graver problem — the gigantic budget deficit.
Saying Election Day victories gave them a mandate to curb spending, Republicans formally agreed last week to a two-year prohibition of earmarks, legislative provisions that funnel money to lawmakers’ favorite projects. President Barack Obama has said he too wants to restrict earmarks, though he defended some as helping communities.
“I am proud that House and Senate Republicans have united to end the earmark favor factory,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a leader in the drive to stop the practice.
Although the ban will make it harder for lawmakers to bring pork-barrel spending back home, it is far from airtight.
Savvy members of Congress have options like “phone-marking,” picking up the telephone and pressuring agency officials to spend money on specific projects.
Lawmakers are sure to exploit uncertainty over exactly how the ban will be applied, such as whether it will bar money for projects already in the works. And Democrats, who will still run the Senate next year, have not agreed to the restrictions. Neither have some Republicans.
“There’s no way you can stamp out every effort” by lawmakers to bring home the bacon, said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., another leading earmark foe. “But you can marginalize it.”
Even completely eliminating earmarks would hardly ensure that spending decisions will be objective and divorced from politics. Presidents and agency officials control where many federal dollars go and have always used that power to reward allies. And formulas that automatically disburse other funds to states are themselves products of past political compromises.
“It makes those who ranted and raved against earmarks feel good,” said Robert Reischauer, the Urban Institute president and former chief of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, of the GOP ban. “But it is largely cosmetic.”
