The Return of Earmarks. Sigh.

It was sad last week to see Republicans in the House of Representatives giving up one of the real accomplishments on the last Republican House: the ban on earmarks.  In 2011, House Republicans passed a ban on earmarks, and since they wouldn’t approve earmarks, Congress couldn’t pass them and the President couldn’t sign them.  The entire Congress ultimately went along with the House Republicans, and in 2014, President Obama even said he would veto any bill containing earmarks.

The problems with earmarks were obvious.  Representatives and Senators were putting in specific appropriations for things they wanted done, not necessarily what needed to be done.  The more powerful a representative or senator was, the more money a district or state would get.  One of the most infamous earmarks was the $233 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.¹

But, with the Democrats now in charge of the Congress and the Presidency, House Democrats have revived the idea and the Senate may, too.  The question was whether the Republicans would participate.  Last week, House Republicans, in a secret ballot, voted 102 to 84 to repeal their rule against earmarks.²  House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy justified the decision on the grounds that Republicans were worried about ceding their spending power to the Biden administration and that members know what’s best for their districts.  Both of which are baloney.  It’s about getting money that members can use to help get re-elected.  It’s fun spending money, especially when it’s somebody else’s money, and Republicans want to have fun, too.

Still, it’s hard to know how upset to get about this.  The Wall Street Journal said, in criticizing the decision: “[A]s the late Tom Coburn of Oklahoma used to say, earmarks are the ‘gateway drug’ to the habit of bigger spending.”  But the way Republicans have been spending money since the start of the pandemic (and during Donald Trump’s administration), I’m not sure what earmarks are a gateway to that isn’t already being done.

It is too late to complain about the return of earmarks on the basis of fiscal responsibility.  If each representative and senator got a “bridge to nowhere” for their district or state every two years, that would only be $60 billion a year.  Which is almost a rounding error in the two stimulus programs President Trump approved and the one President Biden just signed.  But still, as a symbol of a time when Republicans stood for something, it is sad to see it go.
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¹ Not to mention the possibilities for corruption. 
² I wonder why the vote hard to be a secret ballot.  Who was afraid of their vote being public?
Note: Sources for this post are here, here, and here.