The Monkey Cage

Well, okay, maybe you — being a “Monkey Cage” reader and therefore an intelligent and well informed person — knew better, but not most people. Here’s what they think:

Earmarks are the motor driving large budget deficits.

Using omnibus legislation instead of regular orders is the real culprit.

“Airdropped” earmarks (those added at the conference stage) are a major problem.

Those are among the three most common bits of conventional wisdom concerning earmarks (though the first one has probably gotten less conventional since Barack Obama so frequently disputed it during his campaign debates with John McCain.) According to Michael H. Crespin, Charles J. Finocchiaro, and Emily O. Wanless, all three of these widely held beliefs are wrong. In the just-released issue of the Berkeley Electronic Press’ Forum, they argue that:

1. Pork barrel spending is a drop in the budgetary bucket. Using data assembled by Citizens Against Government Waste, they show that total federal spending in 2008 due to earmarks was $17.2 billion, compared with discretionary spending (set annually by Congress) of approximately $1.1 trillion, entitlement spending (required by law) of more than $1.5 trillion, and spending on interest of more than $240 billion. Since 2000, pork spending has remained fairly even, while spending in other categories (e.g., defense, medicare/social security) has risen appreciably. Thus, “while increasing levels of pork may be symptomatic of a larger government spending problem, they are not the underlying cause.”

2. Although it just makes sense to blame omnibus appropriations bills for pork (because legislators can hide favored projects and secure approval from others who are doing the same thing, and they don’t have to worry much about getting overridden at higher levels), when all appropriations bills, bill-by-bill and over time, 1997-2008, are examined it turns out that the amount of earmarked money depends very little on whether the bill was part of an omnibus package or not.

3. Although last-second, secretive air-drops are supposed to be a big problem (because they happen behind the scenes without public scrutiny or legislative hearings and add so much to the total bill), the data don’t provide much support for this idea. On average, just 16% of total pork spending has been added at the conference stage. “However reckless the practice, our results suggest it is misguided to blame conference committees for the amount of pork barrel spending – the individual committees in the respective chambers are responsible for the bulk of the earmarks.”

Many earmarks are easy targets of criticism, e.g., the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere” or a $3 million appropriation for a study of bear DNA, as is the entire practice of earmarking, irrespective of the quality (or lack thereof) of the projects that are funding. In reality, though, earmarks are no more than a minor sideshow operating on the fringes of the enormous carnival of the appropriations process. There is considerable irony, then, in watching many of the same members of Congress who posture most vehemently against the rampant waste of earmarks scramble to assert their support for big-bucks defense projects that the Department of Defense itself opposes – projects that in many cases would pour federal dollars into (quelle surprise!) the states they themselves represent. Sounds kinda like pork barrel, doesn’t it?