A Quick Idea About Earmarks
As a belated follow-up to Cassandra’s wonderful post on Monday (yeah, the new guy’s sucking up. You got a problem with that?) that touched on earmark reform, I have an idea I want to throw out. This morning as I was doing my usual volunteer work (or I might have been in the bathroom — memory’s a bit hazy) I had an thought about earmark reform. While I like most of the ideas in Sen. Bennet’s plan, there is one that I think sounds better on paper than in real life, but I might have a solution.
The idea is best summarized by John McCain’s campaign promise of, “I will make them famous and you will know their names.” The problem with this is that publicizing earmarks is not a deterrent, it’s free campaign advertising. For the most part, Congressmembers don’t hide their earmarks, they campaign on them. They brag about how much money they bring home (even if they voted against it, right Mr. Castle?). The flaw in the idea of public shaming is that the only people that matter are the incumbent’s constituents. Those are also the people who benefit from the earmarks. It didn’t matter that the rest of the country saw John Murtha as a crook for all his pork-barrelling. The voters in his district saw him as a hero.
My idea is simply this — require a co-sponsor from another district on all earmarks (or maybe just larger ones over a certain threshold). This way, someone whose voters are not directly benefiting from the earmark can be held accountable. Earmarks themselves are not inherently bad. Very many send money to worthy causes and projects. When this is the case, finding a co-sponsor for your amendment should be no problem. If, on the other hand, it’s just pure pork, then ideally other legislators would want to steer clear of it and it would go nowhere.
I don’t claim this is THE SOLUTION, and I’m sure there would still be a fair amount of mutual backscratching, but it might slow down bad earmarks. But since I haven’t seen this idea anywhere else, and I know I’m not that smart, there must be a flaw in here somewhere (besides the obvious that most politicians don’t really want to limit pork). Tell me where I’ve gone wrong.
Tags: Congressional reform, earmarks
You know what, make the co-sponsor from another party.
Actually, I did think about that. And at almost any other time in history it’s probably be a decent idea. Right now, though, I fear the only thing it would lead to is Republicans get earmarks and Democrats don’t. I have a feeling that if Anthony Weiner tried to get funding for the Queens office of The Society for the Prevention of Terrorists Molesting Puppies, he couldn’t get a Republican to sign on.
LOL your right about that.
The thing is, there is already collusion among these guys on this earmark business. And that collusion is located in how they fundraise. There’s an Ethics investigation into 4 Dems and 2 repubs on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee looking into the earmarks for PMA (the Murtha investigation). The Ethics Committee cleared them all and said this:
In theory it is possible for a lawmaker to get contributions from companies to not be influenced by that when they want something from you, it seems largely improbable. And here they are providing the stamp of approval to some of the worst of it.
So I think that getting a co-sponsor — different party or no — basically becomes Logrolling In Our Time™ (anyone a fan of the old SPY magazines?), Congressional Version.
Earmarks? there are no Earmarks! Obama said he would not sign a budget with earmarks, so there are no earmarks.
you are all just part of the right wing smear machine trying to tear down our Dear Leader.
I can’t disagree with that. I never thought this idea would completely stop the collusion or backroom dealing — nor, honestly, would I want it to. Whether we like it or not, Washington and legislating pretty much runs on “You do this for me, and I’ll do that for you.” That’s why we’ve got problems now that the GOP pulled out of the game altogether. Also bear in mind that most of that took place before 2007, when the House mandated public disclosure for all earmarks. Now, everything is out in the open. all my idea would do is make someone, maybe, have to justify the spending with an argument other than, “Hey, I brought us money, didn’t I?”