Kite & Key Media: Why Congress Couldn't Kill Earmarks

Via Kite & Key Media -- In 2011, Congress was shamed into outlawing earmarks. So why did they bring them back just 10 years later? By 2024, there were more than 8,000 of them at a total cost of $14.6 billion.

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KITE & KEY MEDIA: This is Duke Cunningham. He was a Congressman from California. Which might explain why he looks so happy here.

And this is Duke Cunningham five years later. Looking considerably less happy. Which makes sense given that he was about to get sentenced to over eight years in prison.

Why? Corruption so severe that Congress would go on to ban the practice that allowed it to happen. Which is the good news.

The bad news: Congress then brought it right back.

Good news: A majority of Americans actually agree on a political issue!

Bad news: It’s that politicians suck.

In 2024, 56 percent of Americans told Pew that the government is almost always inefficient and wasteful. And there’s one kind of wasteful spending that Americans seem to reserve a special kind of contempt for: earmarks, which only 22 percent of voters support. Which raises an important question: What the hell is an earmark?

If you’ll forgive us some remedial civics, America’s system of federalism means that the responsibility for public policy is divided up. Your local government takes care of your city, your state government tends to statewide issues, and the federal government’s responsibility is limited to issues that affect the nation as a whole.

Well, earmarks basically ignore this principle. An earmark happens when a member of Congress grabs a wad of money collected from taxpayers in all 50 states and just … gives it to an (often-questionable) project in his own state or district — usually to benefit some special interest group … that he hopes will get him reelected.

And because any individual member of Congress can do this — and because they usually insert them in vitally important bills that, if they don’t pass, will force the army to go back to using horses or something — the money we send to the IRS ends up going to some pretty surprising places.

You probably don’t have much of a problem, for instance, with your taxes going to help fund the military or pay the salaries of air traffic controllers. But how about spending $800,000 funding artists’ lofts in Pomona, California? Or half a million dollars for a new ski jump in New Hampshire? Both of which are actual examples from recent years.

So, how did we get here?

The biggest explosion of earmarks happened in the ‘90s and 2000s. From 1995 to 2005, the number of earmarks increased by almost 900 percent. And the cost in taxpayer money was nearly $30 billion a year.

To give you an idea of just how quickly things changed, in 1987 President Ronald Reagan vetoed a transportation bill because it had 152 earmarks, saying “I haven’t seen so much lard since I handed out blue ribbons at the Iowa State Fair.” By contrast, in 2005 President George W. Bush signed a transportation bill with 5,671 earmarks in it.

Now, did some of that spending go to worthy causes? Probably. But a lot of it also went to things that seemed suspiciously self-serving.

Like the Democratic congressman from Mississippi who spent $900,000 in taxpayer money to repave a handful of roads where his family happened to own not one, not two, not three, but four different homes.

Or the Republican senator from Alabama who steered $175 million into the University of Alabama system … where, by pure coincidence, it seemed like every single building was named for him.

But the lifetime achievement award for earmarking surely goes to the man we introduced you to earlier. During his time in Congress, Duke Cunningham used earmarks to steer over $100 million in taxpayer money to defense contractors — not for the normal shady reason that they were in his district but for the exceptionally shady reason that he was taking bribes from them.

How big were the bribes? According to the Department of Justice, they were worth at least $2.4 million.

How do we know he did it? Well, he literally created a “bribe menu” … and wrote it on his own business card.

So, to review: Duke Cunningham, terrible congressman … and also pretty bad at doing crimes.

In the aftermath of the Cunningham scandal and others like it, Congress was finally shamed into getting rid of earmarks in 2011. Which seems like a tidy ending to this story.

Except for one thing. They brought them back in 2021. And by the 2024 fiscal year, there were over 8,000 of them, at a total cost of $14.6 billion.

So, why restore a practice with such obvious downsides? Well, to be fair to defenders of earmarks, there are better arguments than “we’d like more corruption, please.”

For one thing, many people argue that, since the Constitution gives Congress the power to make spending decisions, this is actually the way things should operate. Because without earmarks, it’s the departments and agencies in the executive branch who will determine who gets what contracts.

The counterargument to that is that those departments and agencies actually have lots of professional staff whose job it is to carefully vet and audit government contractors, while the approach of many members of Congress is just to say “yeah, I know a guy.”

Another defense of earmarks is that their fiscal impact is actually pretty small. In 2022, for instance, earmarks made up less than 0.2 percent of all federal spending. But while it’s true that getting rid of earmarks isn’t going to balance the budget, that less than 0.2 percent… still added up to over $9 billion of taxpayer money that was arguably wasted.

Which brings us to the other big argument in favor of earmarks: It’s not actually waste. It’s just the cost of doing business. Because Congress is so divided along party lines, earmarks are one of their few useful negotiating tools. If this Republican’s district gets some money to widen a country road in exchange for this Democrat getting some funds for a new arts center … well, that’s how you get enough votes to pass a bill.

But while there may have been some truth to that in the past, these days a lot of members of Congress slip earmarks into a bill … and then turn around and vote against it. Which gets them all the credit for bringing money back home and none of the blame for unpopular laws.

And let’s face it: If it takes mechanisms this shady to get anything done, that’s less an argument for earmarks than it is an argument for sending different kinds of people to Congress.

If we give lawmakers a power so ripe for abuse, we shouldn’t be surprised when corruption is the result. Washington is a city full of temptations. And, given the wrong incentives, even the people we trust the most can succumb.