Don’t roll back ban on earmarks

Last week’s elections were a stunning rebuke of the Washington establishment and “business as usual” politics. Yet some Congressional Republicans are actually proposing to revive legislative earmarks—the quintessence of wasteful Capitol Hill cronyism.

What part of “drain the swamp” didn’t these lawmakers understand? A majority party that would turn its back on fiscal conservatism and populist anger—after the election we’ve just had—is simply begging to be voted out of office.  

{mosads}The epitome of special-interest spending provisions, earmarks used to get tacked on to bills in the House and Senate. Typically, they directed money to parochial, “connected” interests in someone’s home district or state. The money was awarded without competition and no logical explanation for the expenditure was required. This is how taxpayers ended up funding Cowgirl museums, turtle tunnels, and even golf courses with statues of lawmakers who requested the earmark.

Far from being a normal exercise of Congress’ “power of the purse,” ad-hoc earmarks to local interests were long considered an unwarranted expansion of the legislative prerogative for Appropriations. Presidents from Jefferson to Madison to Cleveland regularly shot down earmarks, often with observations such as “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”

But in the 1990s, earmarks became all the rage on Capitol Hill.  Politicians used them to help get re-elected, directing funds to businesses in their home districts and holding together shaky coalitions with promises of a dip into the pork barrel.

Readers might remember Alaska’s $223 million “Bridge to Nowhere.” It became an infamous symbol of earmarking run amok in the Bush years.  But beyond simple waste, earmarks resulted in more than a few corrupt deals. As the advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste catalogued extensively, these included hundreds of millions of dollars steered toward law firms, contractors, shady pop-up nonprofits, and clients of staff, friends, and family. They were often repaid with campaign contributions and a revolving employment door for staff and Members of Congress alike. 

Earmarks were a great way for everyone in Congress to scratch each other’s backs, tell the folks back home that they were bringing home the bacon (pork, naturally) and generally trade votes to ensure re-election and coalitions to push other legislation. Earmarks were not democracy in action, but cronyism.

So we got rid of them.

Exactly six years ago to the day, a coalition of reformers, that included leaders like Tom Coburn, led the effort to ban earmarks in the Senate. Soon after, GOP leadership in the House of Representatives voluntarily followed suit. They could hardly do otherwise, having been buoyed to a majority by the Tea Party’s wave of public disgust with overspending and corruption.

Now, as another such wave crashes over Washington, we’re hearing calls from people claiming that there is too much transparency in Congress, and that the wheels of government are paralyzed because senators and representatives can no longer essentially bribe each other into cooperation. This is madness.   

Congress should listen to the will of the people and focus on the mandate they were given: repeal Obamacare, pass tax reform to bring back jobs, secure the borders, confirm constitutional judges, and defeat ISIS. They can also renew a commitment to sound government by reaffirming their support for the earmark ban. The people voted to drain the swamp, not decorate it with earmarks.

A former U.S. Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint is president of The Heritage Foundation.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.