| Parsippany, September 2, 2008-Tom Wyka is asking the New Jersey Congressional delegation to support a moratorium on "earmark" spending. "Earmarking has become an industry, with campaign contributions being viewed as 'investments.' Last March, the Senate failed to pass an amendment banning earmark spending for a year. I suggest that the New Jersey Congressional delegation support a moratorium on earmarks. Dick Zimmer, John McCain, and Barack Obama have already expressed support."
An "earmark" is a provision in legislation that directs funds to be spent on specific projects. Typically, legislators use it to direct a specified amount of money to a particular organization or project in their home state or district. Earmarking is different from the appropriation of money to a particular government agency, because the appropriate executive department can exercise discretion as to where and how those funds are spent. The use of earmarks in the House of Representatives and the Senate has has expanded significantly over the past few decades, but it is becoming increasingly controversial. Some nonprofit organizations, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the nation's top universities, refuse to accept grants and contracts funded by earmarks.
"I'm all for getting funding for worthy projects in your district. But what bothers me is the process," explained Wyka. "Earmarks undergo little or no debate in Congress, they are not subject to competitive bidding or administrative review, and they are seldom reported on by the press. Earmarks are usually added at a late phase to large bills that fund the federal government. If you are a Congressperson or a Senator, you then can't oppose the earmark without voting against the whole bill. So there's no easy way to stop it. Then there's log-rolling, which means that members support bills with another member's earmarks, in hope that the other member will support theirs. It gets out of control quickly. It's also unfair, because it doesn't direct funds to the most-deserving projects. Whether an earmark makes its way into a bill depends on the seniority and power of the member supporting it, not on the worthiness of the cause."
According to Wyka, "Not only is the earmark process often unfair, but it often leads to corruption. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham of California pled guilty to taking bribes in exchange for earmarks and was sent to prison. That was an extreme case, but it is also common for earmarks to go to a member's campaign contributors. For example, according the Seattle Times' report titled 'The Favor Factory,' my opponent Rodney Frelinghuysen had $83 million in defense earmarks in 2007. From 2001 to 2007, he had received $327,100 in contributions from the earmark recipients. It doesn't look good."
Wyka explains, "We will eventually solve part of this problem by public funding for national political campaigns. Americans for Campaign Reform estimate that we could publicly fund all races for national office-that's House of Representatives, Senate, and President-for just $6 per person. We would save far more than that per person in pork-barrel spending alone, because members of Congress would no longer have to reward their big fundraisers. In 2007, we had a successful pilot project for public funding of campaigns in three legislative districts in New Jersey. It worked. And it's the future. In the meantime, we need to think about how to deal with earmark spending. We need to stop the 'quid pro quo' one way or another."
Jeff Flake, a Republican of Arizona, gave the following speech before the House of Representatives on September 26, 2007: "Among the many downsides to earmarking, and one that we rarely talk about on the House floor, is the practice of 'circular fund-raising.' Campaign donations are given to members, members secure earmarks benefiting their contributors, and contributors in turn are able to give members more donations. This cycle is repeated over and over and over. Unfortunately, this is a bipartisan practice. The media has reported on many such arrangements for members on both sides of the aisle. Legal issues aside, circular fund-raising does not pass the smell test. Whether it's fair or not, the crimes of a few of our former colleagues have cast suspicion over us all. Continued rampant fund-raising is simply not worth the trust it costs us with our constituents. I think that most of us had higher aspirations when we came here, than groveling for crumbs that fall from appropriators' tables. I hope that we, as members of Congress, will finally decide that enough is enough."
Resources:
http://web.mit.edu/osp/www/ear...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI...
http://just6dollars.org
http://www.cgs.org/index.php?o...
http://earmarkwatch.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
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