New ethics rules haven’t squashed pet projects

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Dems get lion's share of earmarks
The change in power means that Democrats instead of Republicans now get the lion’s share, roughly 60 percent. Republicans who were accustomed to getting plenty of projects, such as Zach Wamp of Tennessee, are having to make do with far fewer.

Wamp complained earlier this year that he was denied a water and wastewater project for Claiborne County; last year, the GOP-dominated Appropriations Committee approved $838,000 for the project but it fell victim to the newly empowered Democrats’ moratorium for 2007 in an earmarks-free bill passed in February.

Earmarks exploded in cost and number after former GOP leaders Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Tom DeLay of Texas advocated using pet home-district projects to help retain Republican majorities.

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Until last year, GOP members running Congress were setting new records every year in loading up spending bills with pet projects. But the bribery conviction two years ago of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., and outrage over the proposed $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska prompted Republican leaders last year to limit earmarks.

Cunningham took more than $2.4 million for using his influence on the House Appropriations Committee to win defense contracts for those who bribed him.

Earmarks come in countless varieties. Job training programs, grants to police departments, improvements to military bases, renovations to historic buildings and research grants for home-district colleges are just a few.

Opinions vary, but the most commonly accepted definition of an earmark is a line-item project not requested by the president but inserted into spending legislation.

Democrats like Obey say there’s also plenty of politics involved in the choice of projects in the president’s budget and in the awarding of government contracts and grants by GOP agency officials.

Small percent of budget
The government is functioning this year with virtually no earmarks — excluding defense — after Democrats imposed a one-year moratorium when they completed 2007 spending bills that Republicans left unfinished upon losing control of Congress last November.

Obey complains that screening lawmakers’ requests for back-home projects is an enormous waste of time and energy, considering they total only 1 percent to 2 percent of the spending bills.

“The reason I hate earmarks is because they suck everybody ... into the idea that we have to be ATM machines for our districts,” Obey said. The result, he added, is that all the focus then goes to “the tiny portion of most bills that are earmarks.”