Cheese Factories on the Moon

Why Earmarks are Good for American Democracy

Scott A. Frisch, Sean Q. Kelly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317262497
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

It has become part of US political convention to attack 'earmarks' - legislative provisions that direct funds to specific projects - as wasteful and corrupt. In this provocative book Scott A. Frisch and Sean Q. Kelly argue that in fact earmarks are good for American democracy. Using extensive interviews with Washington insiders and detailed examples they illustrate how earmark projects that were pilloried in fact responded to the legitimate needs of local communities, needs that would otherwise have gone unmet. They also demonstrate that media coverage of earmarks tends to be superficial and overly-dramatic. Cheese Factories on the Moon is a much-needed challenge to a widespread but deeply flawed 'consensus' about what is wrong with US congressional spending.

CHAPTER 1

WHOSE PORK IS IT ANYWAY?

 

 

Established in 1975, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is located in Fort Worth, Texas. It bills itself as “the only museum in the world dedicated to honoring women of the American West who have displayed extraordinary courage and pioneer spirit in their trail blazing efforts.” The museum is in the congressional district of Texas Republican Kay Granger. First elected to Congress in 1996, Representative Granger was previously elected to the Fort Worth City Council in 1989 and served as the mayor of Fort Worth between 1991 and 1995. In 2002 Granger requested that the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee—affectionately known as Labor-H—of the House Appropriations Committee earmark funding for the museum. Labor-H appropriates money for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which is authorized under the Museum and Library Services Act of 1996 (reauthorized by Congress in 2003). IMLS is an independent agency with spending determined each year in the Labor-H appropriations bill; in this case $90,000 was earmarked for the Cowgirl Museum “for creation of and equipment for an audio tour of the permanent exhibition.”¹

Then–Chief Clerk of the House Appropriations Committee Jim Dyer, a Republican appointee, recalls, “Oh, the right went berserk. What kind of crazy use of tax dollars is this? They had a field day.” Citizens Against Government Waste is a Washington-based “watchdog” group whose mission is “to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government.” One of their annual rites is to publish the “Pig Book” highlighting appropriations earmarks. For 2003 they awarded the Cowgirl Museum its “Hall of Shame” award (also awarded to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for earmarks aimed at them) “recognizing dogged perseverance in the mad pursuit of pork.” In 2006 another watchdog group, Americans for Prosperity, scheduled the museum as one stop on its “Ending Earmarks Express” road tour of “lawmakers’ questionable pet projects.” In their press release they claimed that “most Texas taxpayers … are outraged to learn that their federal tax dollars are spent on projects that aren’t a core function of government.” Senator John McCain, a vocal critic of earmarks, held up the Cowgirl Museum (along with a long list of other projects) as an example of government waste in his testimony before the Senate Rules Committee in 2006.

Jim Dyer explained the rationale for the earmark. The museum draws a large number of Latino visitors “who do not speak good English. Much of the museum’s growth is driven by the growing number of Hispanic folks in that part of the country. What did the money do? The money put in translation systems so American citizens and visitors could learn something about their culture. Is that a bad thing?” Not according to Dyer. “It’s certainly not as bad a thing as those who derided it as a waste of taxpayer dollars.” From Dyer’s perspective Kay Granger, like so many other members of Congress, was responding to a local need; she was representing the interests of her constituents and her community by gaining an appropriation through a congressionally authorized program (authorized under the Museum and Library Services Act) and agency (the Institute of Museum and Library Services).

* * *

Congressional earmarks have become a symbol of what is wrong with American politics. A national obsession with earmarks has developed—stoked by watchdog groups, a handful of congressional opponents of earmarks (like John McCain), and a compliant media who construct narratives dramatically populated with greedy lobbyists and members of Congress who “deliver the goods” in exchange for campaign contributions or, even worse, outright bribes. Anyone unfamiliar with the term earmark got an education during the 2008 presidential election. Opposition to “wasteful earmarks” was a centerpiece of John McCain’s presidential campaign. He highlighted his crusade against earmarks in the Senate, arguing that getting control of earmarks was central to balancing the federal budget and cementing his “brand” as the reform candidate. During the presidential debates McCain tried to put then-candidate Obama on the defensive by criticizing a $3 million earmark obtained by Obama for a projector in a Chicago planetarium. And Republican National Committee ads supporting presidential candidate John McCain crowed about his record on earmarks:

What about pork-barrel spending? In 20 plus years in the Senate, John McCain has never sought an earmark…. Not once. As Governor, Sarah Palin vetoed nearly half a billion dollars in wasteful spending and cut earmark requests by hundreds of millions of dollars. Barack Obama? In three short years in the Senate, Obama requested nearly a billion dollars in earmarks. Nearly one billion dollars…. And Joe Biden? Biden has been requesting earmarks for decades. John McCain—Never requested an earmark.²

Sarah Palin boasted that she had said “thanks but no thanks” to the $223 million “Bridge to Nowhere” that had become the latest icon of the anti-earmark forces. Given the animus toward earmarks generated by John McCain and his fellow travelers, President Barack Obama insisted that the multibillion dollar stimulus bill passed during the first weeks of his presidency be “earmark free.”

Not only have anti-earmark crusaders portrayed earmarks as synonymous with waste, the practice of congressionally targeted spending is also frequently associated with political corruption. The highly publicized case of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a former member of the House Appropriations Committee who was sentenced to federal prison for accepting bribes in exchange for favors, is frequently referred to by those fighting against earmarks as evidence that the system is rife with corruption. Cunningham’s fellow federal inmate Jack Abramoff, the one-time high flying lobbyist who bragged that the congressional Appropriations Committee was “an earmark favor factory,” helped to link earmarks with corruption in the public’s mind (however, the charges against Abramoff did not involve earmarks). The national Democratic Party’s 2006 election campaign effort to brand the Abramoff and Cunningham scandals (and other scandals not related to earmarks) as fostering a congressional “culture of corruption” further contributed to the depiction of an earmarks-corruption nexus.

Contrary to the narrative that dominates contemporary debate over earmarks, we argue the position that earmarks are good for American democracy. We do not ignore the fact that the federal budget is out of balance (in fiscal year 2009 the federal budget deficit was $1.42 trillion), but the roughly $18 billion spent on earmarked projects in 2009 is hardly to blame for that. If Congress had not spent a single penny that its members distributed through earmarks, the 2009 budget deficit would have topped $1.4 trillion. Rather than focusing on earmarks, critics of government spending decisions should focus their attention on the programs that Congress authorizes. If watchdog groups object to the $90,000 earmark for the Cowgirl Museum, their ire should not be directed at the Labor-H appropriations bill that funded the earmark, but it should be directed at the Museum and Library Services Act that authorized federal expenditures on museums and libraries. If supporting museums and libraries is not a “core function of government” (according to the Americans for Prosperity), the Republican Congress should not have authorized the program in 1996 (or President Clinton should have vetoed it), or the Republican Congress should not have reauthorized it in 2003 (or President Bush should have vetoed it). In addition, the watchdog groups should focus their attention on the entitlement programs where most of the federal budget is spent, rather than on the small percentage of discretionary spending that earmarks represent.

The quotation from former Senator Gramm that inspired the title for this book provides a different way to understand earmarks. In passing authorizing legislation Congress prioritizes the policy goals of the American government. In this fanciful case, Congress says “we shall build a cheese factory on the moon.” Once authorized, the appropriations process focuses on funding this priority; it is here where earmarks are inserted into spending bills to serve more narrow interests. Who could blame Senator Gramm? If money is to be spent on moon-based cheese factories he should fight for the interests of Texans. It is in his interest and in the interest of his constituents that he fight for those dollars; he has a responsibility to fight for those dollars. But focusing on the earmarks he receives ignores the central question: Should we build a cheese factory on the moon? Should the federal government support museums and libraries?

The debate over earmarks detracts from the larger issues that drive the federal budget out of balance. The vast majority of federal spending is attributable to entitlement programs (like Social Security and Medicare) and to defense. As Dyer explains, if “wasteful government spending” is to blame for budget deficits, “We’re wasting more money in Medicare today than we are in any other program, [and] we’re wasting more money today in defense procurement than we are in earmarks.” In short, if the federal government is to gain control over budget deficits, getting rid of earmarks is not the panacea that the critics suggest. Debating the value of earmarks—far from helping to solve the problem—distracts from the far more weighty issues that American government needs to face up to: What should the policy priorities of the country be? Can funding for Medicare and other entitlement programs be made sustainable? “If ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ was a line item in the budget,” Dyer argues, “by god we’d get rid of it; but it’s not.” But “to equate earmarks with waste, to equate earmarks with corruption, to equate these things with pure political influence, to say that these projects have no merit does not paint the full picture of what you’re dealing with” when it comes to fiscal responsibility.

Our Argument

Our argument is simple: We contend that earmarks are good for American democracy. We believe that earmarks reflect the exceptional nature of American democratic institutions. The Framers of the Constitution invested the power of the purse in Congress. In Federalist Paper No. 58 James Madison (ever the good democrat) regarded the power of the purse as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.” By keeping the power of the purse close to the people, through their representatives, Congress would remain responsive to the needs and wishes of the sovereign people and thus allow the national government to adapt to local needs.

In Federalist Paper No. 58 Madison also argued that it was the power of the purse that would protect Congress from “overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government.” Madison and the other framers of the Constitution maintained a healthy distrust of executive power. It was the advantages of executive power invested in a singular executive discussed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 70 (the ability of a singular executive to maintain secrecy and the singular executive’s ability to act with “dispatch”) that caused the framers to bestow the power of the purse on Congress; it was a weapon with which Congress could resist the advances of the executive into the prerogatives of the legislative branch. It is this logic that underpins our argument that stripping Congress of the power to earmark, thereby undermining its power of the purse, would represent an immense shift in the balance of power between Congress and the executive that would allow for dramatically increased executive power, which is precisely what the founders sought to avoid.

The First Amendment to the Constitution preserves freedom of the press. With regard to earmarks, the modern media—relying heavily on watchdog groups and congressional opponents of earmarks as their sources—provide a narrative framework through which most Americans understand earmarks; it is the basis of the public’s instinctive, negative reaction to earmarks. We argue that certain traits associated with the contemporary media bias them toward sensationalistic and negative coverage of earmarks that fails to acknowledge the role of earmarks in the American constitutional order, leading the media to provide superficial coverage of earmarks that highlights their silly aspects and draws implicit parallels between earmarks and corruption. Lobbyists benefit from the First Amendment’s protection of the right of the people to petition government for the redress of grievances. Often cast in the role of “villain” by earmark opponents and the media, we argue that lobbyists can play an important and valuable role in the earmark process; they help groups by making their earmark requests more competitive, and they help members of Congress and their staff by providing expertise about the appropriations process that most members and their staff do not have.

* * *

We are political scientists; but this book is neither balanced nor dispassionate. In our view the discourse surrounding earmarks has been one-sided, superficial, and self-serving; by taking a strong position in defense of earmarks we hope to partially redress the notable lack of balance surrounding this issue. Despite the whimsical title of the book and the contrarian nature of our argument, our work is empirically grounded as is typical of political science research. We draw on more than three dozen interviews with current and former members of Congress, current and former congressional staff, lobbyists, interest group representatives, and members of the executive branch, and ultilize extensive research in the archived papers of numerous former members of Congress. Unless otherwise noted, quotes in the text are from interviews that we conducted specifically for this book. Many of these interviews were conducted with the promise of anonymity; we have taken pains to protect congressional staff in particular, identifying them only by the party of the member for whom they work, and the chamber (House or Senate) in which they work only when that context is necessary for the reader to appreciate the context of the comment.

CHAPTER 2

“NO MONEY SHALL BE DRAWN FROM THE TREASURY …”

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Article I, Section 1, The Constitution
of the United States of America

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States …

Article I, Section 8, The Constitution
of the United States of America

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law….

Article I, Section 9, The Constitution
of the United States of America

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