Earmark demagoguing is a rough equivalent to the old stories about "welfare queens driving Cadillacs." There are definitely earmarks that are wholly frivolous (the "bridge to nowhere" being the classic example), but even if you eliminated all of these, you'd still not even make a dent in the deficit or markedly affect, well, anything.

Earmark demagoguing is....

And its a lot more fun than debating what to do about Medicare or CAFE standards. No wonder I'm so bitter.

"If you keep it both transparent and modest, there's nothing really all that wrong with it."

Agreed. The point is to match earmarks with campaign contributions, contact with lobbies, and similar indications of quid-pro-quo graft. Transparency should include who gets what for what, not just who proposed spending tax money for gold-plating the Bush library bathroom sink handles, but rather who proposed doing so while pocketing a big donation from building contractors in the area.

Ed

In the context of the entire federal budget, $20 billion is not that much. In the context of the discretionary domestic budget -- and particularly the budgets of individual agencies, because earmarks are not spread evenly throughout the federal government -- $20 billion makes a huge impact.

Each earmark has to be administered, for one thing. Funds devoted to earmarks are usually subtracted from funds available for other activities agencies are obligated -- by Congress -- to perform, for another. When appropriations bills in Congress are late, which most of them have been in recent years, earmarks added at the end of the legislative process can require entire agency budgets to be rewritten. As a practical matter, authorizing committees in Congress no longer do effective oversight of executive branch agencies, meaning that there is no check within Congress on earmarks passing through the Appropriations committees for all manner of projects only vaguely related to the mission of the agencies that have to administer them.

Finally, Kevin's argument about Congress having input into federal agency spending is belied, first by the fact that Congress had considerable input before the explosion of earmarks in the last ten years, and second by the vigorous K Street lobbying industry devoted specifically prying money out of agency budgets for earmarked projects for some organized interest. There are some legislators -- Sen. Kohl of Wisconsin is notable in this regard -- who are conscientious about not pushing earmark request for frivolous projects or spending to pay off an interest group. Most Congressmen and Senators just grab for as much as they can get.

Sen. McCain gets static on this issue because he has been an active legislator who has fought a losing battle against the earmark explosion since it began. Sens. Clinton and Obama, who only ran for the Senate to have a platform from which to run for the Presidency, are to all appearances fine with the badly corrupted appropriations process as it exists now. Naturally that means they will get no criticism on the earmark issue, because earmarks only really matter in government, not on the campaign trail.

Earmarks are not a huge area of government spending, but they may be a large source of government corruption. Let the states decide on their specific needs and that of their residents; individual members of Congress can't be expected to have the knowledge necessary to micromanage every state, and they should only spend money when they understand what that money is going towards.

Ah, Kevin.

Hmmm, UnThinkProgress and Kevin Drum playing "Gotcha!" with McCain.

Hyppocracy much?

I guess we can expect the vestigial media to start hammering McCain anytime now for calling for an end to all those programs--these are his own words, and he should be expected to at least know what the funds are going to when he speaks, no?

Didn't think so.

I think Congress set up some system where each rep and senator is allowed a certain reasonable base amount each year (which can carry over if unused, adjusted for cost of living/regionality cost factors), which they can use separately or in conjunction with other reps and senators, no real questions asked. But if they use that amount up, and need additional earmarks for a project(s), then that project(s) must be voted on or approved either at full house/senate level or at least full committee level of some sort--force the rep(s)/senator(s) to publicly argue why, if this additional project(s) is so important, they did not use their base amount on it.

I guess McSameOld is going to try to out-do Dubya in the "I don't need no stinking facts" department. I mean, it's clear Dubya is his mentor and model. Now McSameOld has seen the light about keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy and stopped objecting to torture for use in interrogations. The only place he's differed is on issues concerning illegal immigrants. He deserted Dubya on that point in order to take the harsh, punitive position more popular with conservatives.

One tiny, feeble bit of resistance to Dubya's influence under wingnut pressure.

What a fine, upstanding example of knuckling under to get the nomination. No wonder a lot of Republicans don't trust him.

In essence, Republicans will be negating their own votes in November. They'll elect GOP Congresscritters on the strength of their ability to earmark federal $$ for the home district, while also putting McCain in the White House where he'll let bureaucrats allocate those $$.

Egbert's Theorem: Only I get to throw the punches because I prefer violence. If you fight back, you're a hypocrite because you're against violence.

Totally unsolicited, McCain throws out a number, $60 million, and somebody questions him about it. That constitutes a 'gotcha?'

Hardly.

Personally, I've never really seen the harm in allowing members of Congress to have a certain level of influence over allocating federal funds in their states and districts.

There's plenty of harm in defining earmarking so narrowly. Earmarking enables members of Congress to influence allocations of federal funds. They may make corrupt or selfish earmarks, but they also use earmarks to compel the executive branch to do its job.

Let's say the federal government has a responsibility to protect citizens from the dangers of certain federal activities--maybe repairing a dam. A lazy or corrupt executive branch might choose to spend the money on something else--maybe a shiny bathroom or a war--if it isn't earmarked for repairing that dam and if Congress won't cut the funding if it isn't spent as intended.

Many earmarks are the gum and rubber bands that try to hold government together when it refuses to do its job without explicit instructions, resources, and supervision.

I'm not sure the point Kevin is trying to make, about earmarks being only related to directing spending and not affecting the level of spending, is entirely accurate. I think you could argue that there is a coupling between the direction of spending and the amount one is willing to spend. As an example I could imagine that if Congressman A can get an earmark for $5million benefiting his district, he will be willing to tolerate $5million more in overall spending. Basically I don't think the separation between direction and level is that clean (in fact I bet that this is what leads to budget-blowing corruption).

That said the amount of increased spending due to earmarking has an empirical ceiling of $18billion, which as Kevin points out is not that much. It is the size of NASA I think though...food for thought...But it is important to remember that the $18bil is a ceiling - the likely amount of increased spending due to earmarking is probably considerably less than that (that's intuition, no data to back that up).

Limit and make earmarks more transparent by letting each member of Comgress and each Senator make an individual earmark to be spent in the members own district or state. Limit these amounts to $4 million. Members could join with other members to provide for awards tha tmay overlap districts or benefit many districts. The expenditure would be made public with each member having to state on the record the amount and recipient of the award.

One of the problems I have with anti-earmark campaigns, including Larry Lessig's ChangeCongress, is that eliminating earmarks just transfers budgetary powers from Congress to the President, and the founders intended for Congress to have the power.

Yes, earmarks have been seriously abused, but that can be greatly reduced by making the process transparent, with a senator or representative's name prominently attached to every change in every bill and made public immediately, so good government groups can scream before a piece of crap legislation can be voted on.

re: "...all that eliminating earmarks would do [is] move the spending decisions into other hands. It wouldn't actually reduce spending by a penny."

In the attempt by the usual idiots in the mainstream media to portray Ron Paul as hypocritical for submitting earmarks for his own district, that never stopped them from ridiculing Ron Paul when he pointed that out. (While he wouldn't have spent the money if it had been up to him, but if the money was going to be spent anyway, why shouldn't his constituents get back at least some of their own money?)

The biggest budget busters are measured in hundreds of billions, starting with the most lavish (in terms of cost-effectiveness) military spending in the history of the planet.

KD: If you keep it both transparent and modest, there's nothing really all that wrong with it.

I might agree with you if there was any hope at all of transparency. But earmarks routinely get added to the budget in the middle of the night, and no one seems to know who did it. How on earth can you defend that?

But that's all that eliminating earmarks would do: move the spending decisions into other hands. It wouldn't actually reduce spending by a penny.

A Republican talking point is based on an intellectually dishonest distortion of the facts?

Say it ain't so!

Focusing on earmarks is like focusing on flag pins.

I support earmarks. The more the better. I love it when Congress uses its constitutional power over the purse to build schools, hospitals, fund COPS, remodel hospital emergency rooms, improve bridges and roads. It's awesome. And its been going on since 1789.

In my experience the people who spend the most time bitching about earmarks are the same people who don't blink an eye enacting billion dollar tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, including tax breaks for oil companies. But spend $500,000 on a community center, now that's a freaking outrage. I also notice that these same people who scream when a Member earmarks money for a local road or school are usually the same people falling all over themselves anfd waving the flag about how we need to build roads and schools in Iraq. If Americans benefit, though, I suppose its immoral pork.

You can even make a case for eliminating earmarks entirely and leaving detailed budgeting decisions entirely up to the federal bureaucracy.

I don't think you can: the "federal bureaucracy" means one of two things -- regulatory bodies that are often captured by the regulated industries and insulated from public accountability, and the executive.

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