Just don’t call them earmarks.
Plans are in the works to revive a legislative procedure in which lawmakers can tie funding in appropriations bills to specific projects – airports, bridges, museums – in their home state or district. The process will now be referred to by the serene euphemism of “community project funding,” since the traditional terms (earmarking, pork, horse-trading) have come into disrepute. Whatever it’s called, it’s a good idea.
Earmarking got a bad rap over the years, and not entirely without reason. Total spending on such measures rose from less than $3 billion in 1991 to $29 billion at its peak in 2006. Tales of misspent funds proliferated. Favors were exchanged. Crimes were committed. You might recall a $223 million set-aside for connecting a remote Alaskan town to a yet more remote island. An uproar over this “bridge to nowhere” was one reason both parties suspended earmarks altogether in 2011.
In fact, though, such boondoggles were the exception. Over the years, lawmakers generally requested small-dollar earmarks to solve local problems or fund workaday projects. The process often made Congress more responsive to regional needs and legislators more attentive to what they were passing. Because earmarks merely directed funds that were already being appropriated, moreover, they required no new spending and added nothing to budget deficits.
More important, they created incentives for compromise. A lawmaker looking to advance a general-interest bill could sweeten the pot by funding local initiatives favored by an opposition member. This gave the minority an interest in governing, encouraged bipartisanship, and helped resolve collective-action problems. Although unlovely, it was often quite consequential: Both George W. Bush’s Medicare expansion and Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act relied on earmarks (broadly defined) for passage.