The president has one more year to govern. What will he do with that time ? Some have speculated that he will attack Iran. The probable purpose of the infamous NIE report was to foreclose that option by misleading the American public about the status of Iran’s nuclear program. What other option has he ?
Well, he could attack Congress. The growth of earmarks has marked the past decade. What are earmarks ? They are spending provisions that are added after a bill has passed and gone to committee. They are not voted on and there are no committee hearings or other due diligence measures used to avoid waste or corruption. They are a way for individual Congress members to reward donors or to favor their own districts with tax funded projects, regardless of merit.
Richard Nixon tried control spending with something called “Impoundment”, in which the executive branch simply refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. Congress retaliated by passing the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act in 1974. There are two differences between then and now. One, the funds Nixon impounded had been appropriated, meaning they had been in the law passed by Congress. Earmarks are not in the law. They are added in committee reports, chiefly to avoid public scrutiny. Second, by 1974, Nixon was fatally compromised by the Watergate scandal. From that point on, Congress was in control until Reagan was elected. The results of that control included the fall of South Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the 20% inflation of the Carter years. Congress was probably not responsible for the Iran Hostage Crisis, but the military was terribly weakened by Congress during that era. The rescue mission failure followed.
Are earmarks popular ? Ask Rudy Giuliani. Spending has a constituency, frustrating those of us who would like to see major reductions in government spending. What about earmarks ? If they were popular, you would think they would be specifically mentioned in the legislation. Instead, they are concealed from view. Why ?
The “Bridge to Nowhere is a good example. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens added this to a transportation bill and an uproar ensued. It wasn’t exactly an earmark but it illustrates the issue. Gravina Island has 50 inhabitants and Ketchikan only about 8000. The bridge to connect them would have cost over 200 million dollars. Some of this demonstrates the odd politics of Alaska. Juneau, the capital, cannot be reached by land from the rest of the state. An initiative to move the capital to Wasilla failed in 1994. Wasilla is a town north of Anchorage and was a compromise between the bitter rivals of Anchorage and Fairbanks. Ultimately, Stevens lost his battle for the Bridge to Nowhere but smaller pork barrel projects are enacted every year by way of earmarks. I have previously posted on this issue. Now the Porkbusters may get some real help.
Bush has suggested that, since the earmarks are not actually in the legislation, they are not law. The executive branch may choose not to spend the money on them, requiring Congress to pass legislation and make them very visible, or allow the earmarks to melt away in the glare of publicity. This might be a very good way for Bush to reclaim some of his tattered legacy on domestic issues. At his Press Conference he said:
earmarks are special interest items slipped into big bills often [un]asked — at the last hour. congressional leaders at the last election, [said] they would curb [ear] marks. they made some progress. there is more transparency in the process, but they have not made enough progress. the bill they just passed includes about 9800 earmarks. together with the previously passed defense spending bill, congress has approved about 11,900 this year. i am instructing the budget director to review options for dealing with the wasteful spelling in the omnibus bill.
He has been thinking about this for a while because, at his State of the Union Address last January, he said:
“Over 90% of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate — they are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law.
It will be interesting to see what happens. So far, the Democrats have flubbed the chance they were given in 2006 to show they can govern. Will they fight for earmarks ?
Earmarks seem like an obvious place to cut spending but, alas, what is obvious outside the beltway is not obvious inside.
We are needing a whole culture change in Washington DC. I’m not sure what the best approach would be. It was supposed to be elections, but those seem to have been co-opted. We had Al Gore reinvent government–what more could one ask for?
Earmarks nicely explained. The solutions are so easy on paper, which you pointed out. But just like a well-planned, much needed decrease in food consumption, the fattest and most in need of the reduction learn soon enough how to cheat and finagle around restrictions. It’s going to take a resolute executive to effectively turn back the porkers, be they D or R. The party inbreds running for president who have been overeating all their public life are unlikely to change their ways when their veto pen is poised over the latest round of sauteed earmarks. I don’t have confidence in any of the leading candidates to have the cojones to tough love the munchers at the feed trough. Have yet to hear any of them draw a line in the sand over earmarks, although I might have missed it along the way. The earmark abuse will continue until the pen becomes mightier than the swill. None in this group so far, albeit McCain would probably come the closest to a pork cop based upon his renegade tendencies, and then the Fred after that with his small govt bent. One of those times where I’d love to be proven wrong.
What is the old saying? There are two things you do NOT want to see made: sausage and law. So it is with earmarks.
I wish GWB would remove them all, with the idea that each and every one of them needs to be voted on, in public view. This is a big deal to me because the earmarks often have nothing to do with the bill in question. They are just inducements or disincentives during roll call.
Oh well. I need to go watch Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I am so tired of cynical, self serving politics. Especially if it is the only way to get things done…
Sometme, read “Advise and Consent.” It’s a good novel about Washington in the 50s. David E would tell you Drury was gay and that’s why the crisis in the novel is about a gay Senator but the rest of the story is very well done. He went on to write two sequels and the last was about how a weak president lost the Cold War. Drury was a UPI reporter in Washington in the late 40s and wrote a nice non-fiction account of his career.
Dr. K., those are great recommendations. ADVISE AND CONSENT was wonderful, and was made into a great movie.
Henry Fonda played that nasty Leffingwell, and was perfect in his cold snottiness (though that probably was not acting!). They also allude to Brigham Anderson’s gay history, which was quite daring for its time—I think that was the first modern (post WWII) depiction of a gay bar. Maybe Drury being gay had something to do with how sympathetically Anderson was played.
I have never understand why the gender preference of a person really matters, but that’s me. In the movie and book, it was just a tool by which Anderson was threatened, and it made Van Ackerman look like the amoral monster his character was.
I believe that it was the last movie that Charles Laughton made—he played Seabright Cooley, a Southerner! Burgess Meredith, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, and Franchot Tone are all wonderful to watch in the film.
Anyway, the rest of Drury’s novels are quite good. The dystopian novel COME NINEVEH, COME TYRE was too much of a downer, maybe, and its companion THE PROMISE OF JOY was too upbeat. But they are all quite good, and worth a reader’s time.
I actually like Drury’s novel about space exploration, THE THRONE OF SATURN. But I am a propeller head from waaaaay back.
Eric, you are obviously an authority on Drury. Have you read his non-fiction book? It is excellent and the basis for much of the first novel.
Unfortunately, I heard on the radio yesterday, maybe on Hugh Hewitt, that the deal to get the appropriations bill through Congress included Bush leaving the earmarks alone. If so, that is bad news but not inconsistent with his lack of moral fiber on everything but the war.
I’m no authority on political novels—though I have read quite a few. A major problem in this world, I think, is that people claim expertise where they have none. Oh well.
I think you mean A SENATE JOURNAL, right? It’s very interesting. Most folks nowadays aren’t interested because it was about the mid to late 1940s politic system, essentially. Drury was pretty Republican in most ways (he thought that Taft was a great man, which he probably was), but in his novels, Democrats run the government.
My brother is a political junkie, and he got me reading this kind of thing quite early.
It’s interesting to read the pretty nasty reviews of Drury’s later books (ADVISE AND CONSENT got a Pulitzer). But I promise you, had Drury written about evil Republicans and supersecret cabals that assassinate left of center Supreme Court justices, those same critics would have LOVED Drury.
Drury wrote what he wanted to write. And lots of people—me included—enjoyed his novels. ADVISE AND CONSENT was his best, and it is interesting to compare it to A SENATE JOURNAL for clues about who is meant to be who!