Group Wants Leaner Federal Budget by Eliminating Pork Projects
EARMARKS
The Hour
Anthony Rotunno
Boston University Washington News Service
3/7/07
WASHINGTON, March 7 – Despite a $15.8 billion reduction in 2007 earmarked spending, some members of Congress say that even more fat needs to be trimmed from the federal budget by eliminating wasteful pork-barrel projects.
Last year, members of Congress procured a total of $13.2 billion to fund specific projects not included in the initial federal budget, according to the 2007 “Pig Book,” a report released Wednesday by the non-partisan, non-profit organization Citizens Against Government Waste. The report identified 2,659 “pork barrel projects,” which it identified as funds, used for a specific purpose, that are not appropriated in the normal budgeting process.
But unlike previous annual reports, this year’s was confined to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. Spending bills for those two departments were the only ones Congress passed last year. Money for all other agencies and programs were included in a single “omnibus” spending bill enacted this year after congressional leaders imposed a moratorium on earmarks.
“We have a long way to go in order to help us restore the confidence of the American people in how we spend their tax dollars,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, said Wednesday of overhauling the earmark process .
Although Congress has begun to initiate rules changes to reduce the number of earmarks and make the process more transparent, McCain said not enough has been done fix the system.
In January, the House adopted a number of rules to overhaul the pork barreling process. The new restrictions included measures requiring the identity of all earmark sponsors to be disclosed and prohibiting members from having personal financial stakes in earmark legislation.
President Bush also asked Congress to cut the number of earmarks in half in the coming year.
“We are pleased with the new procedures,” McCain said.
But, he added: “Have we gone far enough? Absolutely not. I’m glad to see the president recently said he wants to cut out half of the earmarks. I don’t know how exactly you do half of them – it’s like getting rid of half the drug dealers.”
While making the earmarking process more transparent could help expose unethical practices, members of Congress still have an important obligation to secure federal funding for specific local projects, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, said in an e-mail message following the press conference.
“An earmark is valid if it is requested by a municipality or nonprofit in the Fourth District and I can explain its value to constituents in a community meeting,” he said. “The projects I support are…valuable transportation, education, human services and economic development projects.”
Despite the fact that only two appropriations bills went through the normal process, said Tom Schatz, the president of Citizens Against Government Waste, members of Congress still pushed as many special projects as possible through the budgeting process. “Pork is the gateway drug of wasteful spending,” he added.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, added more than $1.6 million to the Pentagon budget to “improve the shelf life of vegetables,” and the House added $1 million for the Allen Telescope Array, a project “dedicated to astronomical and simultaneous search for extra-terrestrial intelligence observations.”
Projects like these illustrate the type of wasteful spending of taxpayers’ dollars that members of Congress are capable of, Schatz said.
“There is no permanent fix to the earmark problem,” he said. “We’ve long been fighting the war against wasteful spending. As the 2008 process unfolds there will be more exposure of which members of Congress are asking for these projects, and it will shed a lot more light on what’s going on here in Washington with our money.”
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