Oink, oink

Citizens Against Government Waste has released its annual Pig Book.  Rather depressing reading, although some of the earmarks are so strange they're funny.  The entire 2009 book may be found here.  Many of the projects for which the funds are appropriated are actually worth while; the problems are the means by which the funds were appropriated (often tacked on to wholly unrelated bills for instance, rather than subjecting them to normal budgetary debate), and the use of funds for specific projects where few jobs are generated and little use to the rest of the country can be found.  Rather than taking tax dollars from Florida and spending them on research into the uses of wool and wood in a few states (especially since these products have had developed uses for thousands of years), take fewer taxes from the states and allow them to utilize those funds as they see fit.  Or, if we just can't stand that, issue block grants to states based on population and economic factors to divvy up for state priorities.

Some of my favorites:

'$4,545,000 for wood utilization research in 10 states by 19 senators and 10 representatives. This research has cost taxpayers $95.3 million since 1985. One would think that after 24 years of research all the purposes for one of the world’s most basic construction materials would have been discovered.'

'$206,000 for wool research in three states (Montana, Texas, and Wyoming) by Reps. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) and Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas). Since 1995, CAGW has uncovered 13 earmarks worth $3,417,453 for wool research, always in the same three states. While 47 states have figured out that wool can be best used to make a warm sweater, Montana, Texas, and Wyoming apparently are still trying to work out its practical utilizations.'

'$3,000,000 by Senate CJS Appropriations Subcommittee member Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) for the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks to help make data received from NASA satellite images more accessible to the public. Apparently the two senators have not heard of NASA TV. According to the NASA website, “The NASA TV Public and Educational channels are ‘free-to-air,’ meaning your cable or satellite service provider can carry them at no cost.” Interested viewers should contact their local cable or satellite service provider to get NASA TV, and ask the senators for a rebate of their share of that $3 million.'

Why Politicians Shouldn't Direct Federal Funding

Los Angeles Rep., Maxine Waters, is under investigation for ties to a bank to which she has lobbying ties. According to the LA Times:

A month before Congress enacted the bailout program, Waters helped set up a meeting between the chief executive of the bank, representatives of other financial institutions and Treasury officials. "When a member of the financial services committee calls, you pay special attention," said Jeb Mason, who was a high-ranking Treasury official last fall.

Ms. Water's husband was on the board of the bank until last year, and remains a stock holder (reported holdings as of 2007 were $500,000).

Waters was a senior member of the congressional committee dealing with the financial crisis when OneUnited Bank -- one of the nation's largest minority-owned institutions -- received $12 million in bailout funds.

This type of corruption is a perfect illustration for the long-standing argument on this blog: earmarks or any other Congressional authority that allows Congress to specifically direct federal funds to individuals, special projects, particular contractors, etc. will inevitably lead to corruption. At the very least: contracts should undergo a competitive and transparent bidding process, Congressional members must be required to disclose any financial or lobbying ties, and local and state governments should have some control over dissemination of funds.

In 2007, that most liberal of publications, The Nation, fully agreed that earmarks lead to corruption. Now? - nary a peep. Most of the media has been able to realize that at the least, President Obama isn't bringing pledged change to the system. Change can always come later, right? The champion of this issue, Sen. McCain, understands that we are still in a 'business as usual' mode in Washington, and that is unlikely to change.

Pretty Soon, We'll be Talkin' Real Money

Last night, the Senate passed the omnibus spending bill, allowing the measure to move to President Obama's desk where he's expected to immediately sign it. The bill is only a budget-filler to take the government through until September, when the trillion-dollar-plus budget for 2010 is expected to come up.

I don't object to passing a budget - it's a necessary exercise. But the $8-billion in pet projects really bug me, and the fact that a number of prominent Republicans/traitors support the earmark process makes it doubly hard to swallow.

The big immediate excuse by all for those earmarks?
"It is in America's best interest to close the book on the last administration and let the new one hit the ground running," said Sen. Daniel Inouye, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Please; Congress holds the purse-strings and determines what is in and out of the budget. Even if President Bush had personally requested each and every earmark (the largest requester by dollar value is Murtha, and the largest by number of earmarks is Shelby), blaming what is chosen today on something that originally came up for debate on a prior Administration (Bush refused to sign this bill until some of the earmarks were removed) is the height of childishness.

Here is a list of all the earmarks by dollar value. Strangely, one of the other reasons offered up for allowing the bill to pass as is, is that the earmark dollar value, as a percent of the total budget, is small, and that focus on that small amount is simply diversionary. Wow! $8-billion is such a small amount that you shouldn't worry your pretty little head about it. Now go back to the corner and play with your dolls. Here's a thought - I don't care if the amount is only $1-million. It's the corruption and waste that bothers me.

The long-term excuse for continuing the earmark culture is that the money would be spent anyway, and Congressional members are simply ensuring a 'fair share' for their individual states. This is an amazingly duplicitous argument. It would be reasonable to fight for a block of money to go to one's state or district, and then let the local and state governments go through their normal budgeting and allocation process. Instead, by having Congress decide which individuals projects are funded, local and state governments, and the normal bidding process are circumvented. This power can only lead to corruption in the end, and that end result is the reason McCain has been screaming about earmarks for twenty years.

I think we can safely bury that notion of transparency

After declaring that the stimulus bill would have no earmarks (achieved only by redefining earmark), President Obama will soon be signing a stop-gap 'spending bill' with more than 9,000 official earmarks in it.

Remember that second debate when Sen. McCain slammed the earmark process of an example of wasteful spending in Washington? The one where the President poo-pooed the notion of earmarks contributing all that much, but than said he would be the better champion against them? That was the same debate (the video of the entire debate is in my blog archive) where the now President claimed he would go through the entire budget "line by line." Now we have a 'stimulus' bill that was never read or parsed, a new $410 billion spending bill (that by the way was introduced while the President was conducting the "Fiscal Responsibility Summit" - see yesterday's blog), and talk of yet another stimulus bill for later in the year.

From the title linked article:
"We need earmark reform," Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts on Capitol Hill to curtail the practice.

The bill will contain about 9,000 earmarks totaling $5 billion, congressional officials say. Many of the earmarks — loosely defined as local projects inserted by members of Congress — were inserted last year as the spending bills worked their way through various committees.

Here's what Obama promised on the stimulus bill (from the Change.gov website, which perversely still says the Office of the President-Elect):

No earmarks

Tuesday, January 6, 2009 02:24pm EST / Posted by Dan McSwain

President-elect Barack Obama said today in a meeting with members of his budget team that he will ban earmarks from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that will soon go before Congress.

The President-elect also said he expects his administration to inherit a budget deficit of up to $1 trillion.

He was joined in the meeting by Peter Orszag, Director-designate, Office of Managment and Budget; Christina Romer, Christina Romer, Director-designate, Council of Economic Advisors and Lawrence Summers, Director-designate, National Economic Council, among others.

I don't believe anyone read anything line-by-line, will do so or had any intention of every doing so. I think we can put the whole promise of transparency in the ground now.