Earmark Reform Needed

The Denver Post has an interesting but unnecessarily "gotcha" article up about two earmarks sought by Mark Udall before he swore off earmarks for the year.

It is better have Congress doling out that money than some agency that is totally unaccountable to anyone, given that Bush has refused to do his job when it comes to oversight and management. Congressional candidate contributions are public record. That at least provides some level of accountability now that the Democratic Congress has made requesters of earmarks also public information.

And really-- some career procurement agent with three kids working on $40,000 salary is going to find $6,850 a far more appealing incentive to award a contract than a U.S. Congressman. Considering that Udall has received similarly large amounts from many many donors who do not have federal contracts, it's not really fair to tie the two together.

The fact is that there are not a lot of people who can afford to give that kind of money to a political candidate. Those who can afford it are typically business executives who would be the type to get federal contracts. Not many stay-at-home moms, mechanics, or other regular working folks are in the market for federal contracts.

So you have a limited pool of people capable of fulfilling federal contracts, and a limited pool of people capable of making large donations, and the two pools of people significantly overlap. It's definitely coincidental, and without some evidence it would be irresponsible to report it as causal. Correlation does not imply causality.

On the other hand...

That's not to say the system doesn't provide the appearance of a conflict just in terms of donors and contract recipients, but that's a political issue not an ethical issue. However, when you add in all of the internal favoritism, political horse trading, committee assignments, seniority, and all the other stuff that goes on in the (once) smoky back rooms of Congress, the system is still broken.

Udall and Marilyn Musgrave are wise to suspend further earmark requests until the system is reformed. Many reforms need to be put into place. We know who the earmark winners are, but we don't know who the losers are. That's just as important. There isn't adequate time for the public to review those earmarks, and there isn't enough transparency on how they are allocated, whether there was any competition, and a whole host of other problems.

With sunlight as the best disinfectant, we can have a system where the earmark system is good enough to come back. With a perfect system (which we will never have, but we can try), state and local governments, small businesses, etc. would not need to be lobbying dozens of federal agencies for a piece of the federal budget when it comes to things like defense, national parks, and interstate highways. They could go to their Senators and Representatives for earmarks, and the Congress--under the full light of the sun--could debate and allocate those resources in a very public and accountable way. Imagine how much local tax money you'd save if your city, county, and state didn't have to pay lobbyists to work the federal system, spreading around largesse among low-paid federal workers, or promising lucrative jobs in exchange for federal contracts.

Earmarks can be good. Right now they aren't. Good for Marilyn Musgrave and Mark Udall for drawing a line in the sand.