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**APRIL 15, 2022**

Kuttner on TAP

In Praise of Earmarks

****

The reformed process for targeting community projects gets the balance
of public spending and public accountability exactly right.

In 2011, as part of a supposed good-government reform by Republicans,
the use of earmarks was abolished. An earmark is funding for a local
project tucked into an appropriation bill by a member of Congress.

The policy change was actually pushed by the Tea Partiers to undermine
public spending and weaken Democrats. In a classic case of the political
naïveté of good-government types, opposition to earmarked projects in
congressional appropriations became reformer conventional wisdom.

Now, a much more transparent version of earmarks is back, called
Community Project Funding, thanks to House Appropriations Chair Rosa
DeLauro. This is a vast improvement over the choice of either no
earmarks or the old system of backroom earmarks for the kind of
sweetheart projects that led to bridges to nowhere.

Under DeLauro's system
,
which is now law, the entire process is transparent. At the local level,
community groups put in requests. Requests by legislators for earmarked
projects are public record, available online, and referred to the
relevant committee for decision. The total volume of earmarks is capped
at 1 percent of appropriations.

No money can go to for-profit companies. The lawmaker requesting the
earmark has to attest in writing that neither they nor their family have
any personal connection to the project.

It is about as far from smoke-filled backroom dealing as Congress ever
gets-and a political scientist's dream of realistic, effective
government. The New York Times

quotes Molly E. Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the
Brookings Institution: "Earmarks can help members feel like they have a
stake in the legislative process, in a legislative world where power is
really centralized with party leaders." She adds: "Earmarks-community
project funding, whatever you want to call them-help members feel that
efficacy and remind them why they came to Washington."

Exactly so. But even the

**Times** can't resist a snicker. Evoking the usual stereotypes of
earmarked projects, and reinforcing public contempt for Congress,
here's the

**Times**' lede:

"One hundred million dollars for an airport in Mobile, Ala. Tens of
thousands for upgrades to a police station in the tiny town of Milton,
W.Va. Hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to Arkansas to deal with
feral swine."

Feral swine in Arkansas, yuk, yuk. But you probably wouldn't want them
in your neighborhood. If public investments are going to get made with
bipartisan support, and if government is to regain a good name as
solving local problems, the local member of Congress is on the front
lines of advocacy for local projects. That's why she's there.

Rep. DeLauro deserves our thanks for making the process as open and
transparent as possible to get money to where it's needed, and the

**Times** needs to take Political Science 101 and stop laughing up its
sleeve.

****

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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