Earmarks remain an issue in Congress

Publication: St. Louis Post Dispatch

Deirdre Shesgreen
August 1, 2008

WASHINGTON — It's spending season in Washington, as lawmakers lard up on projects and roll out press releases touting their success in snagging earmarks for their home states.

"Bond secures more than $7 million in federal funds for Missouri farmers," blared a release from Missouri's senior U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.

Among the projects: $735,000 for the National Center for Soybean Biotechnology at the University of Missouri in Columbia and $630,000 for a virtual plant database at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

But Bond and several other area lawmakers aren't as forthcoming about the projects for which they failed to procure money, despite increasing public pressure to disclose their full wish lists.

Each year, House and Senate members must submit earmark requests — provisions to direct money to certain projects — to the congressional spending committees, which then decide which projects will receive the funding. Under new transparency rules, the earmarks that win committee approval become public, along with the sponsoring lawmaker's name. In the House, the intended beneficiary of the earmark is also disclosed.

But watchdog groups say the process is still shrouded in secrecy, with no real public scrutiny of how the winners are picked.

In past years, congressional leaders and members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, such as Bond and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have won significantly more earmark funding than other members. Lawmakers facing tough re-election battles have also fared well.

Open-government groups are pressing members of Congress to disclose their entire request lists, something all area representatives except Durbin refused to do.

"When a lawmaker submits their requests, they are literally signing on the dotted line that they think this is a good use of taxpayer funds," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group. "Constituents have a right to know what their lawmakers think our tax dollars should be spent on."

Durbin released his entire request list for 177 projects totaling more than $1 billion to the Post-Dispatch. His office said the list will be posted on his website today.

Constituents will be able to see "what I'm asking for and why I'm asking for it," Durbin said. "Each one of them I think is defensible."

Durbin's biggest single request is $370 million for three C40D aircraft for Scott Air Force Base.

Other requests include $12 million for new aircraft for the 183rd Air National Guard Wing in Springfield and $2.8 million for the Olin Corp. in East Alton to study the effectiveness of copper surfaces in killing bacteria, a tool Durbin said could be used to reduce infections in military hospitals.

But Durbin is in the minority when it comes to full disclosure. Taxpayers for Common Sense and another open-government group, the Sunlight Foundation, have been canvassing congressional offices to see who will post their requests online. So far, at least 76 lawmakers have done so, another dozen or so have released a list to the media, and an increasing number have said they will forgo earmarks all together.

Among area lawmakers, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has declined to seek any earmarks, criticizing the process as influenced more by political muscle than merit. Earlier this year, as the issue became a hot topic in the presidential race, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the presumptive Democratic nominee, also decided to forgo earmarks. His GOP rival, John McCain, a longtime critic of earmarks, also does not request such funding.

But most area lawmakers staunchly defend earmarks.

And, aside from Durbin, many also say that keeping their requests under wraps until the spending committees make decisions is good policy and smart politics. Disclosing them too early would cause unnecessary bickering among home-state interests, area lawmakers said.

"It gets communities upset with each other," said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

A second factor for keeping the list private until committee approval: "I don't want to embarrass somebody because the chairman of the committee didn't pick their request," Emerson said, in comments echoed by others.

A spokesman for Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, initially said the congressman would release a full list, but then he apparently decided against it. "As in previous years, we will post all earmarks … that are actually funded," Clay said in a statement.

Bond, in a statement, said that winning committee approval is a key check in the process and projects should only become public after that step.

Critics say those arguments aren't convincing. They say lawmakers want to keep the process under wraps so constituents don't know how hard they push a certain project.

"They don't want to be held accountable for the decisions they make," said Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation. "When legislation is introduced, it's not kept secret," even if it has no chance of passage, he noted.

He and others said that requiring disclosure of all requests would make lawmakers more careful about what, and how much, they ask for.

Some local earmarks are already public — those that have won initial committee approval. In the half-dozen or so bills approved by House or Senate appropriations committees so far, St. Louis area lawmakers have secured millions of dollars in funding for specific local projects.

The funding provisions run the gamut. Among the items:

— Bond secured $10.8 million for a mine detection training facility and military canine unit at Fort Leonard Wood in the military construction spending bill. He got $3.75 million for St. Louis flood protection and $2.6 million for the Missouri River Levee System in an energy and water bill.

— Durbin got $3 million for Illinois bike and pedestrian trails (he had asked for $5 million) and $310,000 for the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center in East St. Louis to expand its youth job training and placement services (he had asked for $500,000).

— Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, got $500,000 for improvements at the Ste. Genevieve Levee and $70,000 for the Academy of Science in St. Louis for a program that connects students with working scientists.

— Rep. Todd Akin, R-Town and Country, got $175,000 for SSM St. Clare Health Center for an electronic records initiative and $150,000 for facilities and equipment at Thrive St. Louis, a Christian group that provides counseling on "healthy decisions about sex, pregnancy, and relationships," according to its website.