Spending earmarks were banned for 10 years on Capitol Hill. The pork is back after being revived by the 117th Congress last year.
The infamous process of special spending projects for lawmakers’ home districts was barred in 2011 by Republican congressional leadership. The thinking was that cutting pork would help in three key areas:
- keep spending under control during a time that legislators expressed concern over deficits and debt;
- eliminate questionable projects such as a teapot museum in Sparta, North Carolina, or the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere” in Ketchikan, Alaska; and
- help curtail corruption, like what the country witnessed when former California Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham was forced to resign in disgrace and serve prison time for taking millions of dollars in bribes for earmarked projects.
However, the new Democratic majority re-instituted the practice of pork shortly after being sworn in a year and a half ago. Lawmakers and politicians reportedly resigned themselves to the idea that earmarks are how Congress gets things done.
Dr. Kevin Kosar, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said, “In our system, the job of a representative is to represent his or her district and to do right by it, because everybody in that district is pumping money into Washington, D.C. And some of that needs to come back. That’s just basic fairness.”
Tom Schatz, the president of Citizens Against Government Waste, disagreed with the idea of bringing back pork-barrel projects just because it’s how things are done or what the people want.
“Just because the community asks for it doesn’t mean that is has merit,” he told Straight Arrow News. “In most cases, these would have been projects that were not previously funded because they didn’t likely meet the criteria for that particular project.”
Supporters of earmarks also claim that the 10-year ban never stopped the pork — it just made the process more secretive. Instead of putting earmarks in public legislation, lawmakers went to the federal agencies that control the money to get their special projects funded.
The Democrats’ new process for earmarking is supposed to be more transparent and secure. Each lawmaker is limited to 10 requests, all of which must be posted to the lawmaker’s public website. The postings have to show the communities and not just the Congress member support the projects. The funding for the project can go to only nonprofits or state or local governments. Plus, the legislator must make it clear that neither he nor his family will benefit financially from the project.
The process has also undergone a branding overhaul. The projects won’t be called “earmarks,” a term reminiscent of ranchers who “earmark” pigs to show ownership. Instead, the pork will be called “community project funding.”
This video was first published Aug. 18, 2021.
