More Of Your Tax Dollars At Work

by hilzoy

From the NYT, via Tapped:

"In theory, it was simple: Congress gave two decommissioned Coast Guard cutters to a faith-based group in California, directing that the ships be used only to provide medical services to islands in the South Pacific.

Coast Guard records show that the ships have been providing those services in the South Pacific since the medical mission took possession of them in 1999.

In reality, the ships never got any closer to the South Pacific islands than the San Francisco Bay. The mission group quickly sold one to a maritime equipment company, which sold it for substantially more to a pig farmer who uses it as a commercial ferry off Nicaragua. The group sold the other ship to a Bay Area couple who rent it for eco-tours and marine research.

The gift of the two cutters was one of almost 900 grants Congress has made to faith-based organizations since 1987 through the use of provisions, called earmarks, that are tucked into bills to bypass normal government review and bidding procedures.

Skipping those safeguards can generate more than accusations of political favoritism. As the case of the Coast Guard cutters shows, it also can give rise to grants that never achieve their intended purpose, with the government never even realizing it."

I had had it with earmarks long before this. I can see a case for them in small numbers -- say, one per member. There truly might be things that a Congressperson or Senator knows are good causes that need some small amount of money, but for some reason aren't getting it. Some money for a community theater, a new roof for a school: that sort of thing. I can also see using it as part of a deal for votes: I think it's wrong to put one's own vote for sale in this way, but not so clearly wrong to allow someone who is willing to do this to get an earmark in exchange for, say, serious immigration reform, or health insurance for the poor. But I think that earmarks should be used only very, very rarely, and always to benefit the general public, not a particular constituent. For that reason I am absolutely thrilled about the requirement that members of Congress disclose their sponsorship of earmarks, and I devoutly hope that further results ensue.

I am unclear what to think about the present argument over earmarks in the House. Here's a summary from the Washington Post:

"In speech after speech, Republicans attacked a plan by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) to keep hundreds of earmark requests out of the bills until later in the process. Though Obey estimates that such spending accounts for less than 2 percent of the bills' combined tab of $955 billion, he said he has been snowed under by more than 30,000 lawmaker "boodle" requests. To give himself and committee staff members more time to screen them, he plans to drop the earmarks into the bills when they move to the House-Senate conference committees before the August break, giving members and the public a month to review and question them. Any changes could be made when the House bills are reconciled with Senate versions, he said.

Republicans and some open-government advocates say such a process would deny lawmakers the right to vote on the often-controversial earmarks and would keep them secret for too long. (...)

Obey blames the need for the move on Republicans, who he said saddled the Democratic-controlled Congress with unresolved spending issues from last year, and with the Iraq war spending bill, which passed last month after a protracted fight. "We spent the last five months cleaning up your spilled milk," he said on the floor yesterday.

"It is not that we didn't want [to include] them. It's that our staff did not have the capacity to screen all of them before we brought the bills out," Obey said. "We had to spend the first month dealing with last year's Republican budgets. We had to do two years of work in one."

If Republicans continue to block votes, the combative Obey threatened to cut all earmarks from the bills, denying lawmakers of both parties a coveted opportunity to cement their popularity at home."

On the one hand, everything Obey says is true. He and his committee did have to spend a lot of time making up for the Republicans' failure to pass any appropriations bills last year; and if they got over 30,000 requests, I can see why they don't think they'll be able to sort through them in a few weeks. (I would be very interested to see who made the most requests.) On the other hand, what the Republicans say is true too: putting in earmarks at the last minute does make it a lot harder to strip them out, since doing so would alter the conference report that both the House and Senate have agreed on. I rather hope Obey follows through on his threat to cut them all out; if he doesn't, I will see what comes out of the conference committee report before I decide what to think.

Comments

[Ugh]

More tax boondoggles:

Yesterday's opinion in G-I Holdings, Inc., No. 02-3082 (D. N.J. 6/11/07), provides an eye-opening look at how companies obtain "transition relief" in tax legislation.

[Gary Farber]

The problem is that, as Hilzoy briefly alludes, without going into at length, earmarks also do a lot of good. They're a tool, and like all tools, aren't evil in themselves; they can be used for any purporse, whether good or bad.

If we simply remove the ability of Congressional representatives to help their district, Congress loses a tremendous portion of its political power, and it being a zero-sum game, the Presidency becomes that much more vastly powerful.

And if you're running a hospital, a homeless shelter, you have an an overwhelming traffic problem, a collapsing Fire Department, or whatever deeply serious and real problem of infrastructure or whathaveyou that's suddenly lacking for whatever reason, you count on your Representative or Senator to be able to help you.

Take that power away, and where are the actual people left? Petitioning some office of an assistant deputy in some some subdivision of a division of a section of an area of a subarea of a subsection of an office of the Department of Health and Human Services, or the Department of Transportation?

Lotsa luck with that.

What's needed is transparency, better methods to distinguish worthwhile earmarks that help the public from those that are simply to benefit private interests, and other reasonable limitations.

Elimination of earmarks entirely, which is one proposal out there, and which Hilzoy comes close to supporting, would radically change our nature of government and politics, and make our government endlessly less responsive to the citizenry -- overwhelmingly flawed and problematic and distorted and damaged as the present system is, which certainly needs repair, without argument -- and I'm considerably skeptical that it wouldn't simply vastly contribute to making our government far less responsive and useful. (Which the Republicans would simply love: the less effective and helpful government is, the less people will want it, and will favor shrinking and eliminating it.)

And if Congressional reps can no longer help their districts, people will support them less in any political fight against the Administration in power: after all, why side with the side with no power? And thus Congress loses power to oppose the President in all policy issues, if earmarks are eliminated.

So my thinking is: be careful what you wish for.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The mission group quickly sold"

Out of curiousity, what did they spend the money on?

[eRobin]

He can pull the earmarks from select bills and I think it's a great idea. The country is at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and at home vs. the rogue BushCo presidency and the GOP that fights by his side. Stripping earmarks from a select group of important spending bills is a perfect signal of exactly the sort of desperate straits we're in. We really have to stop playing by the old rules with this crew.

[Curt Adams]

Regardless of Republican misdeeds in the past, allowing unvetted earmarks is like asking a burglar to come in and make himself at home while you go pick up the kids. We know - beyond any doubt - that a huge pack of unvetted earmarks will be stuffed with the most outrageous unjustifiable pork, as well as a fair amount of flat-out corruption. We *know* Congress has quite a few unsavory characters, and we *know* what they'll do when there are no controls.

If the Dem Congress lacks the resources to vet all the proposed earmarks, then they have to limit the number proposed to what they can vet with some kind of rationing scheme like what Hilzoy's proposing (not so strict, though). Not only is Obey's plan bad for the country, but also, since the Dems got elected partly on a "clean government" platform, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot politically. Repeatly. With a heavy-duty machine gun.

[hilzoy]

Curt: as I said, I can see the necessity behind Obey's plan -- I can't imagine how he and his staff would begin to sort through that many earmarks without either doing what he's proposing doing, stripping all earmarks, or delaying all the funding bills. It all comes down to the question, do we take him to be acting in good faith? I suppose we'll see the answer to that soon enough, when the conference bills come in -- assuming he doesn't go the earmark-stripping route.

I would think a limit on earmarks per member plus an early deadline for proposing them would help a lot in subsequent years.

[hilzoy]

I should say: it doesn't have to be an absolutely draconian limit. One of the reasons I'd love to see who proposed what is to see whether anyone proposed frivolous earmarks just to gum up the works. I mean, if I felt mean and didn't believe in playing fair, submitting a million different earmark proposals, none of them obviously ludicrous, would seem like a great way to stick it to the new appropriations chairman.

[OCSteve]

Kudos for highlighting this Hilzoy, but… (You knew that was coming…)

Democrats are in control, and they got elected on certain promises. “Drain the swamp”, etc. It is getting tougher to put the blame on Republicans here.

Pelosi now wants to just call “earmarks” something else (same cite). It is June, and I have seen little or nothing in terms of cleaning up “the culture of corruption”. In fact, the Dems just seem to have taken it all over and are working on improving it to their benefit. That is, making the process less transparent.

Argh.

[cleek]

It is June, and I have seen little or nothing in terms of cleaning up “the culture of corruption”

didn't they just pass something about lobbying reform ?

i agree with your point, though - the Dems are failing to impress me in dozens of different ways, too.

[OCSteve]

Cleek – I’m out of the game now – if you thought I whined before – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

[Ugh]

The 2008 election is going to be spectacularly ugly, it will make the Swift Boaters look like Kerry's best friends. And the number of pardons' Bush hands down in January 2009 will make Clinton look like he pardoned Mother Teresa for jaywalking.

[Slartibartfast]

Pork: the other red meat.

[hilzoy]

OCSteve: They have disappointed me in a lot of ways, but they really have done a considerable amount on ethics. The House did this on its first day:

"Last night, the House nearly unanimously approved a broad package of internal rules changes designed to sever the cozy links that have developed between lawmakers and lobbyists.

The changes would prohibit House members or employees from knowingly accepting gifts or travel from a registered lobbyist, foreign agent or lobbyist's client. Lawmakers could no longer fly on corporate jets. In addition, congressional travel financed by outside groups would have to be approved in advance by the House ethics committee and immediately disclosed to the public."

Since that concerned House rules, it didn't need Senate approval, and so went into effect immediately. The Senate passed its ethics passage, after breaking the GOP hold on it:

"Senate Democrats and Republicans broke a difficult stalemate last night and approved 96 to 2 expansive legislation to curtail the influence of lobbyists, tighten congressional ethics rules and prevent the spouses of senators from lobbying senators and their staffs.

The Senate legislation, hailed by proponents as the most significant ethics reform since Watergate, would ban gifts, meals and travel funded by lobbyists, and would force lawmakers to attach their names to special-interest provisions and pet projects that they slip into bills. Lawmakers would have to pay charter rates on corporate jets, not the far-cheaper first-class rates they pay now.

The House earlier this month approved similar language as part of an internal rules change. But other portions of the Senate-passed measure would carry the weight of law and would have impacts far beyond the Capitol. The House would have to pass comparable legislation for those provisions to take effect."

The House has passed its lobbying package:

"Prodded by Democratic leaders and by freshmen elected partly on promises to clean up Washington, the House approved new ethics legislation yesterday that would penalize lawmakers who receive a wide range of favors from special interests, and would require lobbyists to disclose the campaign contributions they collect and deliver to lawmakers.

Party leaders and new lawmakers worked until the day before the vote to sway some longtime members who had balked at the proposals. It took weeks of persuasion by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other key lawmakers to convince recalcitrant Democrats -- among them some members of the speaker's inner circle.

The new proposals, which in the end passed overwhelmingly, would expand the information available about how business is done on Capitol Hill and make it available online. They would provide expanded, more frequent and Internet-accessible reporting of lobbyist-paid contributions and sponsorships, and would for the first time impose prison terms for criminal rule-breakers. They would also require strict new disclosure of "bundled" campaign contributions that lobbyists collect and pass on to lawmakers' campaigns. Yesterday's legislation passed 396 to 22."

The House and Senate lobbying stuff has to be reconciled, but it is supposed to be before the President before the July 4 recess.

It hasn't helped much that there's all sorts of coverage like this: "Democrats Lose Traction on Ethics Reform". The basic story seems to be that while the Democrats have passed the first two of their three major pieces of ethics reform, they are finding the third a tougher sell. There were similar pieces out before lobbying reform came up for a vote, all about how it looked as though the Democrats were not actually going to be serious enough to require disclosure of bundled donations (for my money, a very big deal), and so they were losing steam, etc. etc. And lo, a few days later, lobbying reform passed, with the bundling provision and most of the other tough stuff in it.

I think they're actually doing quite well on this front. I can think of things I would have done that they haven't, but when I try to evaluate them not by 100% conformity to my wishes, but by what I can reasonably expect, I'm pretty pleased. (And I'm leaving out evaluating them by comparison with their predecessors -- that wouldn't be fair, since the last Congress would make anyone look good.)

[hilzoy]

I just came across a piece on the earmark fight from the Center For American Progress. All the facts it states that I know about, it states accurately. Worth a read.

[Gary Farber]

"I would think a limit on earmarks per member plus an early deadline for proposing them would help a lot in subsequent years."

A first step would be to get a grasp on the relevant numbers of what's been going on: we need to know how many earmarks each member has submitted, and how many each has had passed, in the last few Congresses, as well as the curret one up to now; then we need some grasp of how many of these seemed to fairly clearly benefit the public vs. how many seemed to be unsupportable pork for a private business. Then we need to get figures for what the average percentage for each member is.

Then we can start to figure out what to do about it. As it is, can anyone, prior to getting some grasp of the facts, explain just how much of a problem versus a benefit we have?

Proposing solutions before we understand the size and nature of the problem -- which I believe is very large -- isn't normally considered the optimal order.

[Gary Farber]

"And lo, a few days later, lobbying reform passed, with the bundling provision and most of the other tough stuff in it."

The bundling provision sounds good, but leaves out most bundling.

It sounds great, because it prevent "registered lobbyists" from bundling without itemizing. And everyone knows that the bad guys are "the lobbyists."

Wrong. The bad guys, and the overwhelming percentage of bundling, are done by non-lobbyist corporate executives and donors. Only a tiny fragment of bundled money comes from lobbyists.

It's a great front job that sounds good in the press, but does relatively little to bring transparency to bundling of donations to politicians: the vast majority of it needs to be addressed, rather than just the fraction from "registered lobbyists."

This also sucks:

The Senate in January approved a lobbying package that would require disclosures of bundling and force former lawmakers to wait two years, rather than one, before becoming lobbyists after leaving Congress.

House members last week rejected the two-year "cooling off" period, prompting editorial writers, public watchdog groups and others to accuse Democrats of backing away from their clean-government promises.

Also left out was the provision forbidding astroturfing:

JUDY WOODRUFF: However, left out of the bill was a provision that would have forced lobbying firms to disclose their expenses in promoting political campaigns posing as grassroots efforts. Also left out was the doubling from one year to two the time a former member of Congress must wait before he or she can lobby, the so-called "revolving door" provision.

Neither was it helpful when John Conyers called the Republican amendment (which finally passed, with the aid of freshman Democrats) to include bundling to PACs, not just individuals, "a poison pill":

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), Maryland: This bill involves simply the disclosure of information that the public has a right to know. And a vote against this bill is a vote to deny that public important information that they can use to judge the legislative process.

JUDY WOODRUFF: However, Texas Republican Lamar Smith insisted that the bill also include bundled contributions to political action committees, which now give more money to Democrats than Republicans.

REP. LAMAR SMITH (R), Texas: The majority has let the color of money dampen their desire for more openness and reform. The loophole in this bill that exempts bundled contributions to PACs is big enough to ride a Democratic donkey through.

REP. JOHN CONYERS (D), Michigan: This is a poison pill amendment.

REP. ELLEN TAUSCHER (D), California: Gentleman's time has expired. Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to recommit...

Fred Wertheimer
Democracy 21
What this bill does is expose the multiple ways in which lobbyists provide financial help to assist members. For example, lobbyists gather large amounts of money, campaign contributions, and provide them to members and get credit for doing so.

Disclosing financial links

JUDY WOODRUFF: Smith forced a vote on that issue and, with the help of reform-minded freshman Democrats, prevailed. Both bills then were approved overwhelmingly and now go to the Senate, which already has approved many of these same reforms.

And I hate to admit it, but Paul Miller is half-right here:

[...] PAUL MILLER: Are we doing the system any justice by saying, "OK, lobbyists don't do it now. We'll just have heads of corporate companies do it, labor union heads, and all those other folks." They don't have to file or report this. So is the system any more transparent? I don't think so.

He's wrong that it's not more transparent now: it is, somewhat -- but he's right that the bill only covers a small fraction of the people who need to be covered for actual transparency in campaign bundling.

A lot more needs to be done.

[HymHi]

"I am unclear what to think about the present argument over earmarks in the House. "

Well of course. The people who so easily tricked you and the rest of the Democrats are now in control. Facing that fact must be difficult for many.

"I will see what comes out of the conference committee report before I decide what to think."

Well of course, the benefit of the doubt has to go to the Democrats. Any other action just wouldn't make sense. The best interest of the country is really beside the point.

Atleast we can avoid all the whining and gnashing of teeth now that the Democrats are in control.

They are scum. Many got suckered. The sooner everyone deals with that reality the better off everyone will be.

[J Thomas]

Atleast we can avoid all the whining and gnashing of teeth now that the Democrats are in control.

They are scum. Many got suckered. The sooner everyone deals with that reality the better off everyone will be.

HymHi, I disagree. If it turns out to be true that democrats provide no adequate alternative to the GOP, then people dealing with that reality will take up arms to throw them all out. And when our military deals with that reality they won't take the side of the scum -- their reality will be that supporting the scum does not defend the Constitution.

We'd all be better off with a better reality than that. If we can't get an adequate alternative to the GOP there's going to be masive bloodshed. Feelings will run too high for a gentle revolution.

[Steve]

This HymHi commenter sounds familiar for some reason.