In early February, Office of Management and Budget
Director Mitchell Daniels escalated his war against wasteful
pork-barrel spending by announcing at a press conference that
Congress's practice of earmarking location-specific spending
requirements in annual appropriations bills "has gotten out of
hand" and that "Congress ought to moderate its appetite for these
programs." With tax revenues depressed
by an economy briefly knocked down on September 11 and the war
against terrorism consuming billions of dollars of resources to
ensure America's security, Daniels' concern is well placed. At a
time when it is critical for America to focus its resources and
energy on security and economic stimulus initiatives, many in
Congress have embarked instead on a record-breaking effort to
pander to special interests by larding the budget with wasteful
spending mandates.
Last
year alone, Congress added an all-time high of 7,803 pork-barrel
earmarks worth about $15 billion to this year's 13 appropriations
bills.
Included among these nearly 8,000 earmarks were novel proposals to
extend federal responsibility to such projects as:
- A tattoo removal program in San Luis
Obispo County, California ($50,000);
- The Fort Union Trading Post Bike Trail in
North Dakota ($500,000);
- The Center on Obesity at West Virginia
University ($2 million); and
- An effort to combat "goth culture" in Blue
Springs, Missouri ($270,000).
One
can only begin to imagine what possessed a majority in Congress to
believe that spending more than a quarter of a million taxpayer
dollars to help a prosperous Kansas City suburb confront an
infestation of alienated teenagers dressed in black and posing as
spawns of Nosferatu is an essential responsibility of the national
government. More curious is how Congress could believe this at a
time when the federal government is confronting an international
terrorist assault that has already murdered 3,000 Americans.
A Constitutional Right to Waste Money
Not
surprisingly, Director Daniels' effort to publicly expose and
ridicule bizarrely wasteful spending (in contrast to merely
wasteful spending) irritated many in Congress who felt he was
interfering with important congressional prerogatives. Indeed, as
House Appropriations Committee Chairman C. W. (Bill) Young (R-FL)
was quick to point out in a February 6, 2002, letter to Director
Daniels, "The power of the purse resides solely with Congress.
Unless the Constitution is amended, Congress will continue to
exercise its discretion over federal funds for purposes we deem
appropriate."
For
better or worse, Chairman Young has it exactly right. Just as the
First Amendment to the Constitution protects the rights even of a
fool to speak his mind no matter how peculiar his thoughts might
seem, Title I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution states that
"No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by Law," thereby granting Congress the right to
spend the federal government's money (even for ludicrous projects).
The Constitution adds no caveat that the money should be spent
wisely on useful things in the national interest.
In
short, Congress has a right, protected by the Constitution, to fund
such pet projects as:
- Therapeutic Horseback Riding in Apple
Valley, California ($150,000);
- The recovery of Preble's Meadow Jumping
Mouse ($500,000); and
- Washington State's dolphin replacement
(replace them with what?) project ($4 million).
Chairman Young went on to make the larger
and more practical point that more is at stake in this issue than
constitutional authority: "All wisdom on the allocation of federal
funding does not reside in the Executive branch. Members know the
needs of their districts better than civil servants working in
Washington, D.C." Chairman Young conjures up images of dedicated
elected officials responding to the broad concerns of
constituents--implying that:
- There was a huge ground swell of public
sentiment from the people of Missouri for a million-dollar program
to see whether public transit buses and trains could run on
soybeans;
- Texans really did want $300,000 to pull
the weeds out of the Navidad and Lavaca Rivers; and
- Hawaiians, native Alaskans, and the Bay
Staters of Massachusetts wanted $5 million to facilitate cultural
exchanges that would allow them to reflect among themselves on the
common roots of their 19th century whaling heritage.
Earmarks Are Bought and Sold
On
these points, Chairman Young is clearly exaggerating the extent to
which genuine democratic forces are at work, as well as the federal
bureaucracy's role in deciding how taxpayers' money should be
spent. As the evidence reveals--notwithstanding congressional
insistence on how well Members know their constituents'
needs--these pork-barrel earmarks are bought and sold like cans of
beans, bales of cotton, or cords of wood, and the desires of the
populace really have very little to do with who gets what.
Moreover, most of the specific targets of discretionary domestic
spending programs are ultimately determined not by federal
departments and bureaucrats, but by governors, mayors, and state
agencies, who are arguably as close, if not closer, to the people
and local priorities than congressional staff or well-paid
Washington lobbyists.
A
memo from Jonathan A. Mantay, County Manager of Bay County,
Florida, to the county's Board of Commissioners gives some insight
into how the Washington marketplace for congressional earmarks
typically works. In the memo, Mantay
acknowledges the success of the Arlington, Virginia, lobbying firm
of Alcalde and Fay in securing federal earmarks for the
county--specifically, $8.25 million for Highway 98, $2.4 million
for the Intelligent Transportation Closed Loop System, and $600,000
for two additional projects.
Acknowledging that "the Board has enjoyed
a very productive relationship with the firm," the memo goes on to
provide a new list of prospective earmarks, eight of them totaling
$13.1 million, that will be pursued by Alcalde and Fay. Included on
the list is a $4 million request to relocate the Bay County
Fairgrounds--an amount of money that would cover the annual
salaries of 80 new agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and an even larger number of badly needed U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service agents.
Although the memo does not include any
specific information on how much Alcalde and Fay's services will
cost the good citizens of Bay County, published minutes from recent
board meetings in two California counties give an indication of the
amount charged for the firm's representation. On March 28, 2000,
the Marin County Board of Supervisors authorized the board's
president to pay Alcalde and Fay $6,000 per month for federal
representation for the year; and on December 4, 2001, the
Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Alcalde and
Fay $100,000 plus expenses for its representational services
throughout the 2002 and 2003 fiscal years.
Alcalde and Fay, of course, is just one of
dozens of Washington lobbying firms that sell access to earmarks.
Sagamore Associates, for example, cites earmark acquisition as one
of its chief lines of business. Its Web site notes that
"Shepherding appropriations requests through Congress is a high
priority for many clients. More than half our firm's work is
comprised of this activity, and our track record is strong." Sagamore's
2001 lobbying report to the U.S. Senate lists 81 clients, many of
them universities and local communities seeking "appropriations"
assistance.
Another Washington, D.C., lobbying firm,
The Carmen Group, Inc., includes several successful earmark case
studies in its Web site pitch to prospective clients. Among them
are $860,000 obtained for a historically black college (as well as
a visit to the campus it arranged for a Bush Administration
official) and $269 million in future funding for a light rail
system in another community.
Although, in his letter to Director
Daniels, Chairman Young defends such earmarked funding as providing
"important services for people," this review of the lucrative
white-collar trafficking in pork suggests that these "important
services" may not be readily recognized either by the typical
Member of Congress or by his or her staff. Otherwise, communities
throughout the country would not have to incur $6,000-per-month
retainers to bring their needs to a Member's attention. The fact
that the supervisors of Bay County, Florida, chose to communicate
their desires through Alcalde and Fay rather than their own
Congressman (who does not sit on the House Appropriations
Committee) suggests that the retainer-earning lobbyists may carry
more weight than a congressional colleague.
Congress Knows Best?
In
his letter to Director Daniels justifying his penchant for
earmarks, Chairman Young also notes that "Members know the needs of
their districts better than civil servants working in Washington,
D.C." This observation is of particular irrelevance as it relates
to the operation of a number of federal programs that the chairman,
his staff, and a prosperous band of Washington lobbyists
micromanage by way of thousands of location- and project-specific
earmarks. Many programs, including the Department of Housing and
Urban Development's $4 billion Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) program and the Department of Transportation's federal
highway program, are structured so that their chief function is to
channel federal tax dollars to governors, mayors, and county
supervisors who, in turn, spend the money on local priorities of
their own determination, albeit in accordance with broad federal
goals.
Recent appropriations decisions regarding
HUD's CDBG program illustrate how the objective of decentralization
can be distorted by Congress. The block grant program was created
in the 1970s to help spur community economic revitalization and to
improve a community's stock of housing for lower-income families.
It provides financial grants directly to communities in accordance
with a formula based on population, housing needs, and the number
of low-income families in the community.
Theoretically, mayors and county
supervisors can spend this money on local housing and
revitalization priorities of their determination, subject to
federal program rules and objectives. However, in spite of a
mayor's presumably superior knowledge of the needs of his or her
community, this year's Senate HUD appropriation bill reveals a
reluctance to trust the locals' ability to prioritize their housing
and economic revitalization needs and includes 256 separate
earmarks for specific projects. Such earmarks include:
- $200,000 for the restoration of the Iao
Theater in Wailuku Town, Hawaii;
- $100,000 for the Alabama Quail Trail;
- $750,000 for wildlife rehabilitation in
Quechee, Vermont; and
- $250,000 for infrastructure upgrades to
the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York.
In
some cases, the earmarking of federal spending has become so
extensive that governors and mayors have very little discretion
over funds that originally were supposed to be provided as formula
grants to be spent at their discretion. One case in point involves
transportation funds allotted to Pennsylvania during the 1990s when
a member of its congressional delegation, former Representative Bud
Shuster, chaired the powerful House Transportation Committee.
Although Representative Shuster was instrumental in directing
substantial highway funding to the Commonwealth, in fact, much of
that money ended up in his rural district. As the Pennsylvania
Department of Transportation ruefully noted in one of its annual
performance audits:
Although the planning process established
under ISTEA [the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act
of 1991] appears sound, the process can be undermined when Congress
targets specific highway projects for federal funding. The local
planning organizations and the Department [Pennsylvania Department
of Transportation] are then put in the position of either giving
the project a high priority on their transportation plans, which
means that the monies are not available for other potentially more
worthy projects, or rejecting the project....
The practice of Congress earmarking funds
for specific purposes can significantly impact the Commonwealth's
ability to fund the projects of greatest need. For example,
approximately 27.5 percent ($1.32 billion of $4.8 billion) of the
total funding projected to be available for the highway and bridge
component of the 1997-2000 Statewide Transportation Improvement
Program is for specific projects earmarked by Congress. When only
the funding available for major highway construction projects is
considered, the percentage applied to earmarked projects rises to
84 percent ($1.32 billion of $1.57 billion). Most (70 percent) of
this $1.32 billion is for projects in central Pennsylvania. Rather
than turn down these projects and risk losing the associated
federal funding, the Department accepts the earmarked projects. The
earmarking by Congress of funding for specific major construction
projects therefore severely limits the ability of the Department
and the State Transportation Commission to allocate funds to other
projects that may be of higher priority.
Similarly (and thanks to the seniority of
Senator Robert Byrd), West Virginia motorists this year will see a
portion of their federal fuel tax revenues diverted from pothole
repair to fund such "vital" objectives as:
- The Washington Heritage Trail Map/Guide
($87,160);
- Promoting "Treasures Within the Mountains"
Part II ($19,000);
- The Cranberry Mountain Nature Center
($99,000);
- The Little Kanawaha brochure ($8,000);
and
- The Fayette Station Road Interpretation
($150,128)--which, presumably, will leverage and help "interpret"
the $3.5 million being spent on Fayette Station Road
improvements.
Taxpayers Fund Incumbents' Election
Campaigns
Although the congressional appropriations
process offers Americans a gold mine of humor, behind these
ludicrous examples lies the darker side of the waste and abuse of
financial privileges that result from congressional vanity.
Notwithstanding Members' efforts to cloak themselves in the power
of great constitutional principle, the exercise is really all about
electoral insecurity and efforts to buy friendship and public
affection with the hard-earned dollars of American taxpayers.
In
reporting on Director Daniels' efforts to encourage Members of
Congress to adopt some measure of fiscal responsibility, Roll Call
quotes House Appropriations Committee Staff Director Jim Dyer's
declaration that "It is unrealistic for OMB to ask members to stop
trying to win projects for their districts and help themselves get
re-elected." So there we have it: an
acknowledgement that the principles of campaign finance reform will
not extend to the $15 billion of earmarks paid for with money
coerced from American taxpayers as involuntary campaign
contributions, available only to incumbents.
Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is
Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in, and Christopher B.
Summers is a Research Assistant in, the Thomas A. Roe Institute
for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.