Outrageous: Wasteful Spending on Capitol Hill

Wasteful spending was a hot topic during the campaign, but on Capitol Hill, it's worse than ever.

John McCain didn't win the presidency, but he had this right: Earmarks are out of control in Congress. Indeed, even as lawmakers were writing the giant $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of the financial industry last fall, they were finding creative new ways to waste your money. Buried in a huge budget bill passed the very same week was $6.6 billion in earmarked pork barrel spending-spending slipped in at the request of certain congressmen and never subjected to debate.

Among those pet projects: $2 million for the University of Alaska to study animal hibernation. That was just one of 39 earmarks Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) requested for his home state, just a few weeks before a jury convicted him on federal corruption charges. The total cost of those earmarks to taxpayers: $238.5 million.

The free spending was, of course, bipartisan. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), then the Appropriations Committee chairman, won $40 million to expand a training center for federal customs and border agents. Never mind that the Bush administration said it didn't want the money—the project was in Senator Byrd's home state.

And those are just a couple of highlights from one bill. Flip through the pages of any other spending measure in recent years and you'll find examples just as egregious. Last year's budget included $588 million for a Cold War-era nuclear submarine to be built in Connecticut-money the Pentagon said could be better used elsewhere. Your taxes funded a $3 million earmark requested by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) for a youth summer program at a golf center that bears his name; $123,000 for a Mother's Day shrine in Grafton, West Virginia; and $295,000 for the International Peace Garden in Dunseith, North Dakota (pop. 739). You even paid for a $500,000 teapot museum in North Carolina!

Despite campaign promises of reform from both parties in recent years, the pork problem is only getting worse. During the 2009 budget season, the House Appropriations Committee received so many earmark requests—23,438 of them-that its Web page crashed. In the end, Congress designated 11,610 earmarked projects for this year, at a cost of $17.2 billion, the second-highest amount in almost two decades.
During the presidential campaign, McCain tried to focus the spotlight on earmarks.

"I will make them famous, and you will know their names," he vowed of pork gobblers on Capitol Hill. Barack Obama took a less strident tone. Although he agreed that spending on "screwy things … need[s] to be eliminated," the president-elect downplayed the significance of earmarks, noting that they make up less than 1 percent of the total federal budget.

He's right that chopping them won't solve our fiscal woes. And it's true that not every earmark spends money badly; even that hibernation study might have applications for tired soldiers on the battlefield. But $17 billion is still real money. And more important, earmarks are a proven source of corruption.

Members of Congress often use them to reward the Washington lobbyists who help fund their campaigns. One lobbyist explained this slimy practice to the Associated Press this way: "If you go in to see [members], somewhere in the conversation they somehow say, 'Well, we were looking through our list of campaign contributors and didn't happen to see you there.'

Is there a quid pro quo? No, not directly, but you'd have to be pretty dense not to figure it out."

Sometimes it's outright bribery. Former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) is now sitting in jail after using budget earmarks to procure military contracts in exchange for gifts like antique furniture, swank dinners, and Super Bowl tickets. In at least one case, a defense contractor actually wrote the legislative language that Cunningham slipped into a spending bill.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is investigating whether Congressman Don Young (R-AK) added a $10 million earmark for a Florida highway developer, allegedly in return for some $40,000 in campaign contributions. (Young is one of the folks who brought us that $398 million "bridge to nowhere," which cost taxpayers $223 million before it was finally killed.)

On a more basic level, spending millions without any debate or scrutiny is "fundamentally undemocratic," says Ellen Miller of the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, a political watchdog group. "The process stinks."

If they want to restore Americans' trust in Washington, President Obama and the new Congress need to get serious about earmarks.

In the heat of the campaign last March, both Obama and Hillary Clinton joined with McCain to back an amendment to the $3 trillion federal budget that would have placed a one-year moratorium on all earmark spending. Not many other senators joined them: The measure went down in flames, 29 to 71.

But now that Obama is in the Oval Office, he could use his bully pulpit to revive the bill and force lawmakers to vote while the nation is truly watching. It's safe to assume that John McCain would back him in the Senate.

At the very least, Obama should deliver on his promise to bring transparency to government. Shining a light on people who use their power to reward friends and contributors would be a great start.

Do More

• Get local. Write to your legislators and let them know you don't support pork. Visit house.gov and senate.gov for links to lawmakers.
• Stay informed. There are several watchdog organizations, such as Citizens Against Government Waste (cagw.org) and Taxpayers for Common Sense (taxpayer.net), that will keep you up-to-date. You can even report earmarks you find.
• Become an earmark expert. Visit earmarkwatch.org. It lets you create an account so you can do your own investigating.