Editorial: Web makes life easier for the watchdogs

If you play the earmarks game, try not to come in first

Publication: The Star Tribune

Editorial
December 20, 2007

It must have been easier to do politics before the Internet came along. Increasingly, it seems, every aspect of public service -- who lobbies whom, who takes whose campaign donations, and much more -- is available online for public inspection. And for every politician whose job is harder in the age of the Web, there's a boatload of journalists whose jobs are easier. And not only journalists, but citizen-watchdogs. It's one thing for information to be public, but it's another for it to be available. These days it's so available, it's scary.

Consider the earmark. In an article in Wednesday's Star Tribune about long-running ethics scandals, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was cited for "abuse" of earmarks in defense spending, having channeled "millions" to his district. Earmarks are a notoriously opaque way of spending the taxpayers' money because they get little notice or debate. So, let's just mosey over to www.earmarkwatch.org and see what Murtha's been up to.

Holy Toledo -- er, Johnstown. Did the story say "millions"? From the 2008 Defense appropriations bill, Murtha carved out $166.5 million in earmarks, according to the site. That puts him in first place nationally as a bringer of bacon, as least as far as defense contracts are concerned. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania pulled in a total of $324.8 million in defense earmarks.

Meanwhile, not that it's a contest, Minnesota picked up just $26.4 million in House defense appropriations, according to earmarkwatch. Contributing to that total were two $3 million amounts for Phygen, $3.5 million set aside for Alliant Techsystems, and $3 million for Camp Ripley's pursuit of a "Satellite Multi-Modal Collaborative Crisis and Training Network."

Against this backdrop, Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., has announced that he won't play the earmark game. Earmarks are "corrupting," he says, and he won't have anything to do with them.

Which, we can only imagine, must be a big load off Pennsylvania's shoulders.