A key priority this year in Washington must be getting the federal government’s fiscal house in order, and that process will have to include reining in the many sneaky ways lawmakers fund pet projects.
Though an earmark ban failed in the lame-duck Senate, the debate over stopping the abusive spending ought to continue. That should include closer scrutiny of what are essentially back-door earmarks.
Earmarks allow lawmakers in Congress to direct funds to favored projects without approval from the executive branch. For instance, a lawmaker can get around a denial by the Department of Transportation to build an unneeded road by inserting the project’s appropriation into unrelated legislation.
We understand that not all earmarks constitute poor policy. But because they allow lawmakers to play politics with taxpayer money, we aren’t fans of the process, and we supported the proposed ban of the practice.
A recent New York Times story details that, in fact, many lawmakers are winning billions of taxpayer dollars for projects by the process of “lettermarking” or “phonemarking.” A lawmaker who oversees a government agency’s budget sends a letter or makes a call to the agency’s brass and requests that his project be approved.
A third form is even less direct. By merely suggesting where a lawmaker thinks money should be spent, or “soft earmarking,” the finagling is even more difficult to track.
But it can be just as difficult for agency heads to deny powerful lawmakers’ nods.
Patrick Cronin, a former administrator at the Agency for International Development, explained it to The Times this way: Lawmakers “will tell you that they wanted money to go to a particular university or group or the next time you wouldn’t get the funding in the budget you wanted. So it’s true that you can ignore some soft earmarks, but others you have to take more seriously.”
At least earmarks occur within the legislative appropriations debate. Furthermore, earmarks must be disclosed.
The Christian Science Monitor has analyzed federal spending and determined that traditional earmarks can account for as much as 2 percent of the budget in a fiscal cycle. That meant $50 billion in 2005. Soft earmarks, lettermarks and phonemarks easily add billions more.
Advocates for using the back-door channel argue it is reasonable for a lawmaker to wish to help his district, and we aren’t unsympathetic to that position. Drawing attention to a district’s needs can be a reasonable part of the process.
But agency heads ought to be free to direct money to projects that are deemed truly necessary and not feel pressured into wasteful or duplicate spending.
