Stan Collender, via Matt Yglesias:
An earmark simply is a congressional decision to allocate part of appropriation for a particular purpose. Eliminating
the allocation doesn’t reduce the appropriation, it simply leaves the
allocation decision to a federal department or agency rather than to
Congress.
Except there’s much less incentive to allocate as much money if you can’t guarantee the funds go to your district
Is the the nominee for “misleading analysis of the day”?
Hard to believe anyone would make this argument with a straight face.
I second fineng’s comment. Taking away the earmarks changes the congressman’s incentive to spend money.
The interesting thing about getting rid of earmarks is the effect it would have on the whipping process and legislative negotiation in general. Currently, if you don’t support a bill, an earmark for your district is one of the carrots that can be held out to you. If that goes away, I wonder if it would get much harder to pass things.
Yglesias is an idiot to defend these things. Actually, he’s just an idiot-another one of those
myopic types we were warned about in that 1991? report on economic education
Time for him to brush up on seventh-grade civics.
Show me the constitutional authorization for earmarks; show me the law that authorizes them; show
me the rules of parliamentary procedure. Show me anything other than an established custom of
arrogating powers of appropriation and expenditure to individuals who are only supposed to
act COLLECTIVELY.
BREAKING NEWS: CHRISTINA ROMER HAS JUST DISTRIBUTED HER PAPER ON THE LESSONS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION FOR THE CURRENT CRISIS.
I have already read it. It’s an extraordinary attempt to rewrite history, but her key lesson is that the Great Depression eventually ended! It was a pity that my grandfather didn’t know it timely–he was broken and killed himself in 1933.
The main lesson I draw from her new history of the GD is that once the current crisis reaches the low levels of March 1933, recovery will start. My challenge now is to know how long it will take to go back to March 1933.
As far as it goes, Yglesias is correct. Speaking as a former contracting officer, I can only say that I spent a good part of my career in the world of R&D. It’s in that world that earmarks started: in those days, they were limited almost exclusively to specific academic institutions. Some time after I left, they seem to have proliferated and metastasized into the rest of the appropriations.
It has to be said, one of the hardest parts of earmarks was squaring the (implicit) requirement that they be directed to a specific source with the overarching requirements to maximize competition. I once jokingly suggested that the regulations should add an exception to the requirement for full and open competition for “Directed by legislative act” but my superiors weren’t amused.
For those in the business, “Authorized by statute or regulation” wouldn’t do since earmarks were to be found almost exclusively in the appropriations bill and not in the authorization bill.
Earmarks, in addition, are also a tiny fraction of the budget. People upset with government largess should focus their anger on the size of the totality of the budget. It is the trillions in the general budget and not the millions for bridges to nowhere that poses the real fiscal threat.
My own congressman, a conservative and not a big-spender all in all, still gets a few earmarks. In the ’09 Omnibus, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, they include money for the following:
Improved detection of agricultural pests in California.
Improvements on a highway through U.S. Forest Service land that has long been considered a vital escape route for a fire-prone community.
A number of Corps of Engineers projects on a flood-prone river where levee bursts have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in property damaged and occasionally taken lives.
Several improvements to federal irrigation projects.
In nearly every case, the projects are co-sponsored by other members of the and/or the Senate, often of the opposite party.
Corruption? They all look like reasonable public needs in the district.
Mind you, I’m sure y’all’s congressmen are crooks.
Carping,
I think you missed Phil’s point. If the Congressmen are log rolling to get money for specific projects in their district, they are negotiating, but they are not deciding on projects that serve (or at least aspire to serve) the country as a whole. In a supposed federal system, the governing should take place at the level appropriate to the project. If they have enough money to micromanage local projects, then they shouldn’t be taxing it away in the first place.
Yes, and eliminating a federal executive order banning federal spending on embryonic stem cells doesn’t affect appropriation levels, it simply leaves the allocation decisions to a federal department or agency.
Yet somehow one is considered dangerous politicization of science, yet Congress directing the federal scientific agencies to fund specific programs isn’t politicization of science? Of course it is.
It’s true that it’s not a huge budgetary issue; it’s mostly an issue of whether various putatively fairly formulae and procedures are followed or not, whether in the NSF or in the DOT. (For example, whether Amtrak can spend as it likes or must maintain money-losing long distance routes rather than upgrade profitable or potentially profitable ones.) Depending on the issue, the same person may few the bureaucracy as representing “science” and Congress (or Administration) control as “politicization,” or may view Congress as providing an important democratic check; even if those views appear contradictory.
FWIW, neither the stimulus nor TARP nor any of the controversial big spending bills would pass without logrolling, though one can consider that a good or bad thing.
Wow Barkley,
Such language. I guess you aren’t being idealogical in your response to Barandian? Please try to refrain from resorting to the argument from consensus position. It’s really weak.
Crawdad,
Would you like to more specifically defend Barandian’s argument?
In just what way did Romer “rewrite history”? Of course the GD
reached a bottom in early 1933 and then went up. Everyone knew that
before and Romer does not disagree with that.
I brought up Shlaes because she has got this cockeyed rewrite of
history that says that FDR made things worse. Her biggest piece of
evidence is the 1937 recession, although, of course that recession
happened when FDR backed off his fiscal stimulus in order to balance
the budget, as those who think Shlaes is the New Revelation, are arguing
(oh I know, they are not arguing that; they are arguing for tax cuts that
will balance the budget, whoop de doo). This is simply incoherent, and
so can only be pushed by someone who is selling ideology rather than
factual history.
Do you have any more specific arguments you or Barandian would like to
add? Regarding Barandian’s dad, well, there were plenty of us with dads
or granddads who suffered in the Great Depression and wish that the turn-
around time had come earlier. But, excuse me, what on earth does this have
to do with anything that Romer said, and how does it indicate that she
“rewrote history”? This is just incoherent drivel, excuse me, but I am
losing patience with people who appear to be completely out of touch with
reality and get all self-righteous about it.
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