Earmarks - the Broken Windows of the Budget

In 2006, many members of the U.S. Congress ran on promises to end the era of earmarks and pork-barrel spending.  However, the 110th Congress has not lived up to this promise.  The spending bills for FY 2008 contained about $20 billion in earmarks, and only the Senate reduced its earmarking habits in the 2009 appropriations bills while the House actually increased the level of earmarking.

While the financial cost to taxpayers in real dollars may be small compared to the massive overall overspending problem which has led to the federal budget balooning to over $3 trillion in 2009, the relevance of earmarks should not be underestimated.

In fact, earmarks have become the broken windows of the federal budget. The opaque earmarking process paired with a series of examples of corruption and self-aggrandizement has left taxpayers frustrated.  

In the wake of bridges to nowhere, indoor rainforests and scandals involving some of the appropriators who wield the power to "earmark the [expletive omitted]" out of appropriations bills, as one member aspiring to be chairman of the House appropriations committee plans to do, earmarks - not all of which necessarily amount to pork-barrel spending - have become emblematic of all that is wrong with the appropriations process, and they represent an open invitation to the entrenched "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" mentality.

As U.S. Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina, an avid opponent of earmarks, puts it:

"Earmarks grease the skids for the passage of bloated spending bills. Members of Congress are loath to vote against bill containing pet projects for their district or state. What results is bloated spending bills that contain just enough pork to ensure that everyone will hold their nose and swallow."

CFA supports comprehensive reform of the earmark process, and until this reform is accomplished, a moratorium on this practice.