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Ärende: Pork
============
Better name for "earmarks," PORK.

Dramatic Growth In Pet Project Spending Prompts Scrutiny

By REBECCA CARR

Cox News Service
Saturday, September 09, 2006 

WASHINGTON 

An explosion in the use of earmarks, Congress members' way of funding 
pet projects without public scrutiny, is fueling new efforts to track 
the practice amid fears of rising corruption.

The number of earmarks has surged nearly fourfold over the past decade 
to 15,877 last year, according to the Congressional Research Service, 
the nonpartisan research arm of Congress.

Most earmarks fund legitimate projects such as cancer research, road 
improvements and education programs.

But the propriety of others has been called into question, such as the 
$220 million "bridge to nowhere" funded by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, 
to link an Alaskan island with fewer than 50 people to a town of 8,000.

Critics say the earmarks are passed without any public hearings or 
input. Most are slipped into bills during closed-door meetings of House 
and Senate appropriators.

Earmarks are so closely guarded before the final passage of spending 
bills that most lawmakers do not even know what they are voting for.

That prompts open government groups and lawmakers to wonder if earmarks 
are being dangled for rewards.

"A lot of these earmarks are bought and sold like bales of cotton," said 
Ron Utt, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a 
conservative research group based in Washington.

The increase in earmarks is connected to an increase in the number of 
lobbyists offering to obtain them for a fee, Utt said. In 2000, there 
were 1,865 lobbyists registered to pursue appropriations issues. Within 
four years, that number nearly doubled.

The seamy underbelly of earmarks came to light during the trial and 
conviction of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., for selling 
earmarks to defense contractors and the public corruption scandal 
involving Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Utt said.

But the growth of earmarks is not due to an increase in corruption, said 
Paul Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists, an 
association of 850 lobbyists in Washington.

Instead, he said, it is because local and state governments and 
charitable groups realize that they are a way to obtain federal money 
for their projects and are hiring skilled lobbyists to help them 
navigate Washington, Miller said.

Lawmakers from both political parties agree the system is troubled.

There is a "big temptation" among those who control the purse strings on 
the appropriations committees to use earmarks to not only help their own 
constituents, but to dole out rewards and punishment to members of their 
caucus, said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., an advocate for making earmarks 
public.

"I see no problems with individual legislators trying to get money for 
their district, but they should have to do so publicly and 
transparently," Obama said.

Most politicians campaign on what they can do for their state, including 
how much federal money they can bring home, said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-
Ga.

Isakson worked with Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., to secure $15 million 
in the 2007 Energy and Water Appropriations bill for the deepening of 
the Brunswick Harbor channel, for example.

"What is not appropriate are last-minute, dark-of-the-night, written-in, 
directed appropriations that never have a source of origin, that all of 
a sudden just appear," Isakson said. "That has greatly expanded since 
I've been here."

The increase in earmarks is an indication that the budget process is 
broken and needs to be overhauled, said Gary Bass, executive director of 
OMB Watch, Washington-based watchdog group. "Transparency is essential," 
he said.

In an effort to pierce the secrecy surrounding earmarks, a broad 
coalition of conservative and liberal public interest groups has 
identified some 1,800 earmarks in the House version of next year's 
appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor and Health and Human 
Services.

The coalition has created a searchable database of the earmarks and 
posted it on members' Web sites, while encouraging the public to act as 
"citizen journalists" to check out the spending.

The Sunlight Foundation, a coalition member, even lets Internet visitors 
create maps of where their state's earmarks are going.

"We are hoping to expose the substance and the details of legislative 
spending so that citizens can decide if what their member of Congress is 
proposing and advocating is in the public's interest or in the interest 
of some political contributor," said Ellen Miller, executive director of 
the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group that uses the internet to 
Inform the public about Congress.

There are nearly $500 million worth of earmarks in the Labor-HHS 
appropriations bill, the largest non-military annual spending measure, 
and that figure is expected to increase when a House-Senate conference 
committee takes it up to resolve differences in the two versions.

The most egregious earmarks are added in conference because there is 
virtually no way for another member to dispute the earmark in public 
until it is passed, experts say.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, wants to make all earmarks public. When 
asked to identify his earmarks in the Labor-HHS bill, McCaul provided 
his spending requests for all appropriations bills to date.

"We have nothing to hide. I think you might find that won't be the case 
with some of the other members," McCaul said. "If you are going to ask 
for an earmark, you ought to be able to defend it. I never ask for 
anything that I can't defend."

There are now more than 50 pending bills to regulate the relationship 
between lawmakers, earmarks and lobbyists.

The House is expected to begin overhauling the way earmarks are used as 
early as next week, according to the office of Majority Leader John 
Boehner, R-Ohio.

Tara Copp of the Austin American-Statesman contributed to this article.

© Cox Newspapers

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