by David Hornestay

Created on: August 10, 2011   Last Updated: August 16, 2011

FactCheckED.org defines earmarks as "allocations of revenue in a bill that are directed to a specific project or recipient typically in a legislator’s home state or district." The Office of Management and Budget definition is: congressional funds whose recipient has been specified without adherence to the "competitive allocation process."

Earmarks have been used heavily by members of Congress of both parties.  According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, appropriations bills in fiscal 2010, the last full fiscal year, contained 9,499 congressional earmarks worth $15.9 billion. Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Sen. Thad Cochrane (R-Miss), the Committee’s former Chairman and now Ranking Member, were the two largest earmarkers with a combined total of $890 million, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

While Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have long campaigned against earmarks as wasteful and politically motivated expenditures of tax funds, they came under wider scrutiny as a result of the exploding deficits accompanying the recession and financial crisis. The adverse publicity surrounding a “road to nowhere” in Alaska advocated by one of the state’s powerful Senators several years ago had already dramatized the situation for many.

While some members of both parties in both houses of Congress continued to champion earmarks as reflections of the people’s will by elected representatives in the spirit of the Constitution's separation of powers, the handwriting was on the wall with the Republican capture of the House of Representatives in November 2010. The leaders of the new House majority made it clear that they would ban earmarks in the new Congress. 

Then, although the Democratic-controlled Senate had voted down a proposed ban last November 30, President Obama asserted in his State of the Union speech in January, 2011 that he would veto any appropriations bills that contained earmarks. On February 1, the Los Angeles Times reported that Chairman Inouye, in the face of these realities, stated that he would keep earmarks out of his Committee’s bills for the next two years.

The actual effect of banning earmarks remains to be seen, according to a CNNMoney.com report on April 7, 2011. Forbidden to insert language into legislation, some members have reverted to letters and phone calls to specific Federal agencies to urge funding of projects like veterans hospitals and roads. This type of communication from a Senator or Representative with influence over the agency’s budget or programs is still likely to receive serious consideration. 

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