Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants President Obama to “back off” and let lawmakers continue to direct spending to their home districts by allowing legislators to insert pet projects into funding bills. Reid doesn’t want to give up the power he wields, a power which enables him to bring home dollars to Nevada without having to jump through too many hoops and, this is even more important, a power to use earmarks as enticements to get legislators to vote for other things the Majority Leader wants. Reid should let the dirty little tradition of earmarking go.
During the State of the Union address, the President said “If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. I will veto it.” Reid called this nothing more than an “applause line” and suggested the President was playing to the crowd. Reid is right, getting rid of earmarks would be popular with voters. Many cheered the President’s remarks. And, Reid and the President know, it is easier for the President to threaten a veto of an earmark laden bill than it is to actually veto a popular bill that has a few small, financially insignificant pork projects hidden within. The President has drawn a line in the sand with his veto threat. He now needs to make good on it. Here’s why:
Earmarks may seem like "pencil dust," but they are part of a bigger Congressional problem.
While Senator Reid and those wishing to protect their precious earmarks will dismiss the amount of money earmarks represent compared to the rest of the federal budget (slightly more than three-tenths of 1 percent of federal spending), earmarking is an abuse of the process. It doesn’t take a Nobel Laureate to understand that the federal budgeting process is broken. The ability of a few people (Democrat and Republican leaders both) to control what goes into the federal budget and keep the process largely hidden from view is counter to the principles of good government.
Earmarks may not represent a large portion of the federal budget, but earmarks are a potent weapon used by those in power in Congress to manipulate a system that often puts the will of the people behind the of the will of lobbyists, and political party powerbrokers. Without earmarking, Congress will have to follow a more orderly an open budgeting process. More important, it will equalize the power balance in Congress. By eliminating the funding of pork projects, one mechanism leadership uses to strong-arm legislators into falling into line will be removed.
Many in office for a long time see the federal budget process as unchangeable. They don’t see fixing something as seemingly insignificant as three-tenths of 1 percent of federal spending as worthy of their time. I am sure Senator Tom Harkin has often wished he could take back his 2002 comment that the extra $6.3 billion needed to pay for the farm bill he supported was “pencil dust” in the cost of federal programs. He has taken a lot of flak for it over the years. But, comments like these show the danger those who deal in the staggeringly large numbers of the federal budget face. They let the system overwhelm them. In the farm bill case, $6.3 billion may be small compared to the whole budget, but, like earmarks, the U.S. will only be able to fix its budgeting fiasco by breaking the budget into smaller chunks and fixing what is broken there. The best most logical place to start is earmarking.
Presidents have wanted to put an end to the perk of congressional power that enables power-brokers in Congress to hide pork projects in legislation for decades. I remember cheering President Reagan during a campaign stop in Tampa, Florida in the early 80’s when he demanded the President be given the line item veto so he could veto an earmark without having to kill the whole bill. He was right then. President Obama is right now. But, if President Obama fails to stand up to Senator Reid and the rest of the Congressional club, Americans will still be clamoring for budget reform decades from now as the federal government is surrounded by a mountain of budget pencil dust.
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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.
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