A long time ago a minister at church was talking about a boiler she had seen. The boiler had a gauge on the outside that, basically, told you what was going on inside the boiler. By looking at the gauge, you could tell whether there was enough water in the boiler, whether it was too hot, etc.* The minister went on to say that, in the way the gauge showed what was going on inside the boiler, the faithfulness of our actions showed the faithfulness that was inside us.
I thought of this point recently when I read about the debate among Republicans on Capitol Hill about earmarks. In March the House Republicans agreed to a one-year ban on earmarks. But the Pledge to America that the House Republicans issued last week did not mention earmarks. Representative Paul Ryan (R, WI) said that the Republicans intended to keep the ban, so it wasn’t necessary to mention it; i.e., it’s not something new.
Other Republicans, however, want to get rid of the ban. Representative Jerry Lewis (R, CA) maintains earmarks are a form of direct democracy and that individual legislators know what their districts need better than government bureaucrats. Senator Jim Inhofe (R, OK) says that cutting earmarks doesn’t cut spending and that “[d]eciding how money should be spent is what we are supposed to be doing in Congress.”**
I understand the theory of why earmarks, in some cases, can be okay or even good. And I know that some representatives can be trusted. But the fact is that too many Representatives and Senators have abused earmarks. And while individual earmarks may not involve that much money (though the bridge to nowhere, which was originally approved by a Republican Congress, was to cost $223 million and that is real money), the total does add up.
But beyond that, earmarks are a symbol. If Senators and Representatives aren’t willing to give up earmarks, how can we trust them to cut other spending? They say they will, but why should we believe them?
This is a real problem for Republicans. The Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress increased spending more than any administration since Lyndon Johnson. Because of this history, Republicans need to demonstrate to voters that they really mean it when they say they will control spending this time. As Paul Ryan says, “We need to prove that we’re not going to try to pork our way back to a permanent majority, as we were trying to do before.”
Which brings me back to the gauge on the boiler. Republicans say they will cut spending if they get control of Congress, but will they really do it? Will they really cut back on government? Do they mean what they are saying? A ban on earmarks would be a good gauge.
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* I am not sure whether I remember exactly what the gauge showed; it was a long time ago. But the general point is right.
** The quotations and attributions in this post are from: Neil King, Jr., “Earmarks Cause GOP Rift,” The Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2010.
Update (9/28/10 12:33 pm): Corrected a typo in the title.
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