What is an earmark?

I actually do know a lot about the legislative process. Comes with watching congress on C-SPAN for countless hours. In fact, I was watching the house live on C-SPAN when the 1st plane hit the WTC on 9/11. I know what a "whip" does, and so on.

Today, MSNBC is hammering Palin and anyone who knows her or supports her on the Bridge to Nowhere thing. It's stunning that they refuse to listen to members of the House that they're interviewing when they explain what an earmark actually is.

When you have a highway spending bill (in this case), a house committee studies the issue, figures out what needs to be built, figures out the amount all that would cost, then writes the legislation. The RULES committee then decides how the bill will be "debated" in the full house, and typically does so to shut out the opposition party by limiting the time for debate, the number of amendments that can be offered, and that kind of thing.

It's very different from the senate - if a party controls the house, the house can pass absolutely anything it wants to - the republicans did this for a decade. Tho bills passed by the house have to be approved by the senate verbatim to be sent to the president for signature or veto. Typically, both houses pass similar but not verbatim bills, and they have a conference between the two to iron out the differences. The final legislation is approved again by both houses.

The president has 10 days to sign the bill into law or veto it. If he refuses to sign or veto, it becomes law after those 10 days.

With that background, here's how earmarks work. In the committee, they decide to spend $250B on highways over the next 2 or 3 years. Of that, $1B or $2B goes to Alaska. All fine and good, if the people running Alaska get to decide how to spend that money. But someone on the committee is under some sort of influence (or crack) and earmarks $250M of that money to build the bridge to nowhere. The earmark is simply a directive in the final legislation that this sum must be spent for a specific purpose.

In theory, earmarks aren't evil. Congress has ideas for how to spend the money when they allocate it, which is fine. It's their job. The problem with earmarks is the undue influence. If spending $250M on a bridge to nowhere is a favor to the party bosses in Alaska, it gets votes for someone the congressman cares about (even himself). Or it can be outright quid pro quo for a bribe (that's legislated to not be a bribe in some cases). Or someone not on the committee says "I won't vote for it unless you earmark $X for project Y in my state." Earmarks are traded like currency, too - "I'll vote for your earmark if you vote for mine."

There are a few things to take from this post:
1) Earmarks have become some sort of dirty word. If they're done for honorable purposes, there's not one thing wrong with them.
2) Earmarks are not some sort of pork barrell spending - the money is already allocated and would be spent with or without the earmark.
3) They are abused and the whole process is typically corrupt.

Back to MSNBC. Their political director is Chuck Todd. See the picture below to help you place the name with the face:



Todd is well known to me. He was the editor of Hotline, one of the more influential congressional industry newspapers (e.g. read by all the congressmen, senators, their staffs, the administration and its staff). He was on C-SPAN just about every day in that role for a few years, given 5 minutes here and there to tell everyone what congress was planning to do this week or today. Then he was hired by NBC.

He knows the legislative process intimately and many times more than I do, obviously. He must not be speaking up to correct the obvious mischaracterization of what earmarks are. Or he is speaking up (which is what I'd believe) and the network is deliberately ignoring him (and they probably know better anyway).

They're repeating the "Palin was for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it" mantra, seemingly handed to them by the DNC or some talking points WWW site they run. "They" being the anchors, not the guests. They're criticizing her for lobbying for the money when she ran as governor, then refusing to build something that was a waste of the money, and then using the money for something else.

Again: The money was appropriated to her state with or without the bridge to nowhere.

Here's a snippet from WikiPedia about earmarks. I vouch for it being accurate, since I know it to be accurate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earmark_(politics)

In United States politics, earmarks refer to congressional provisions that direct approved funds to be spent on specific projects, or that direct specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees.
Earmarks can be found in both legislation (also called "Hard earmarks" or "Hardmarks") and in the text of Congressional committee reports (also called "Soft earmarks" or "Softmarks"). Hard earmarks are binding and have the effect of law, while soft earmarks do not have the effect of law but by custom are acted on as if they were binding.<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference">[1]</sup> Typically, legislators seek to insert earmarks which direct a specified amount of money to a particular organization or project in his/her home state or district.


The federal Office of Management and Budget defines earmarks as funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents Executive Branch merit-based or competitive allocation processes, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to manage critical aspects of the funds allocation process.
Attempts have been made to define earmarks in ethics and budget reform legislation. However, due to the controversial nature of earmarks and the effects these definitions would have on Congressional power, none of these has been widely accepted.
Despite the lack of a consensus definition, the one used most widely was developed by the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress:

"Provisions associated with legislation (appropriations or general legislation) that specify certain congressional spending priorities or in revenue bills that apply to a very limited number of individuals or entities. Earmarks may appear in either the legislative text or report language (committee reports accompanying reported bills and joint explanatory statement accompanying a conference report)."<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference">[2]</sup>
​

In the United States legislative appropriations process, Congress is required, by the limits specified under Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution, to pass legislation directing all appropriations of money drawn from the U.S. Treasury. This provides Congress with the power to earmark funds it appropriates to be spent on specific named projects. The earmarking process has become a regular part of the process of allocating funds within the Federal government.
Earmarking differs from the broader appropriations process, defined in the Constitution, in which Congress grants a yearly lump sum of money to a Federal agency. These monies are allocated by the agency according to its legal authority and internal budgeting process. With an earmark, Congress has given itself the ability to direct a specified amount of money from an agency's budget to be spent on a particular project, without the Members of Congress having to identify themselves or the project.

 

It's a good thing for a governor to lobby for highway funds (my example). If it's the wolf dressed in the sheep's clothing of a non-binding earmark, who cares?

 

Well, it is a waste of taxpayer money to actually build the bridge to nowhere. It is a service to the taxpayers to take the money and build roads where they need to be built. His complaint seems to be about the former. If you look at the earmarks that are stupid (like the bridge) and simply eliminated the spending for them, it could be even better.

 

On an only slightly off topic subject... There's a road that goes in a circle around Kuai (Hawaiian Island) that's an INTERSTATE Highway. What INTER state does it connect to? LOL

I'm sure there are interstate highways in Alaska, too.

The answer is so the states can qualify for sucking off the bloated govt. teets via highway funding.

As for earmarks, it's a kind of accounting thing that peoples' eyes glaze over if you get into too much detail. My points are twofold: what they are, and how MSNBC is deliberately misleading people about what they are.