Say Anything Blog

That’s the question being asked by Sarah Kincaid in today’s Bismarck Tribune, and it’s a good one to debate.

On one hand, earmarks do serve an number of legitimate and necessary functions of government.  Certainly most of us can agree that an earmark for things such as infrastructure, or even certain types of medical or technological research, are perfectly acceptable.  And in terms of overall government spending, all earmarks from any given year put together are but a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amounts of wasteful entitlement spending we do.

But the problem with earmarks is that the process is so convoluted, so opaque and fraught with quid pro quo corruption, that the bad earmarks routinely outweigh the good ones and often are approved not based on the merits of the spending itself but rather because it is attached to a high-priority bit of legislation that has to pass.

In North Dakota, earmarks are a particularly contentious issue as the state’s national congressional delegation - Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan along with Rep. Earl Pomeroy - pretty much get themselves elected every single year based on almost nothing other than their ability to bring home lots and lots of earmarks.  They are liberal Democrats representing a red state that has voted Republican for President since time out of mind, so their ability to bring home the bacon is essential.  It is undoubtedly why Dorgan says this in the Tribune article:

We don’t slip [earmarks] into bills. We send out press releases and we don’t call it an earmark, we call it a success.

Dorgan’s bald-faced lie aside (he and his colleagues weren’t ashamed to slip $4 billion of unnecessary agriculture pork into a must-pass spending bill for the war in Iraq), it’s worth noting that while earmarks may sound great in press releases in the long run they may not be great for the state in general.

After all, all federal money comes with strings attached.  The more our state is dependent on funds from the federal government the more leverage the feds have to manipulate state policies.  Ever wonder why farming has become such a complicated business?  It’s because farmers have become dependent on the federal government, and the government has responded with truckloads of regulations and red tape.

And, once again, there’s the question of corruption.  Certainly Dorgan and his cronies aren’t shy about using earmarks for a bit of mutual back-scratching either.  For instance, Dorgan secured a several million dollar contract for the family of one of his former staffers (and past Democrat Sec. of State candidate) Kristin Hedger.

So, in summary, I think it’s fair to say that not all earmarks are bad.  But the process by which they are approved is as it allows people like Conrad, Dorgan and Pomeroy to exploit the system for political gain.