Should all members of Congress have to disclose the names of companies that benefit from their earmarks?

No

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by June Matthies

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The proper question is not "Should all members of Congress have to disclose the names of companies that benefit from their earmarks?" Rather, the proper question is, "How could members of Congress disclose the names of all the companies that benefit from their earmarks?

People hear the words like "earmarks", or worse: "pork", and immediately rage fills their mind and smoke comes out of their ears. This is the way they have been conditioned to react. In reality, one demagogue's "earmark" is your city, county or state improvements. The maintenance, construction projects; you know, the stuff that's going on behind the sign that reads "Your tax dollars at work". Your member of Congress's chief job is to "look out for his community". He/She is charged with bringing projects, improvements, start-ups, and jobs to his congressional district. Every storm drain improvement, post office built, or pot hole being fixed on your street is your Congressperson working very hard to bring these projects and dollars to your town. The Congressperson who can bring the most money back from Washington DC is a popular, multi-term office holder who "gets things done" and "watches out for his constituents."

How many companies will benefit from earmarks, say for our hypothetical post office? There are many, from the primary engineering company that hires drafters, surveyors, and the office people that run their business, to the companies that grade, pour cement, frame buildings, install windows, install bathroom fixtures, lay floor, carpeting, landscape, and paint the white lines in the parking lot, to name more than a few. We must count even more people who are being benefited by this earmark. We must count the businesses, large and small, that benefit from a nice new post office, the delis nearby who serve the postal workers and others lunches, the Starbucks, the stationery store, the uniform shops selling postal worker's gear. How many companies have benefited so far from this earmark? We are speaking of only one hypothetical situation. Multiply these by the hundreds, by the thousands, all over our fifty states. Care to keep counting?

So, if a person in Oregon has a Congressperson who is adept at gaining what is needed in his constituency, he knows how to "help his people." To a person in New York, this same Congressperson is a "Prince of Pork" or "Earmark Happy". Why should someone in Flatbush care if the potholes on Highway 126 are six feet deep and have been known to swallow a Toyota whole? Exactly. He is not benefiting from the Oregon money, and has absolutely no interest to learn about how Congress works, or to even understand what's going on. All he knows is some Talking Head on the TV rabbiting on about "Pork" and "Earmarks", and thinks he should be outraged as well. This is how the People are rendered impotent by the more cynical power brokers in Washington DC. An informed electorate is calm in the teeth of the Doom-saying Demagogues. They are not stampeded here and there by the whims of the Powerful. They know the facts, they know how their government works, and they know how to participate in the Body Politic in meaningful ways, instead of being pawns in a game they don't understand.

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