One cheer for the return of earmarks
After a 10-year hiatus, earmarks are coming back to the U.S. Congress. Democrats and Republicans alike repudiated the practice of letting congressmen direct federal spending to specific projects and enterprises around the start of President Barack Obama’s administration. Now both parties have decided to revive it, with reforms.
The decision should inspire mixed feelings. Earmarking isn’t the most noble activity a congressman can undertake, and it can even be corrupt. But the ban hasn’t lived up to the hopes that were invested in it.
Spending on earmarks was never a large part of the budget. A new report on earmarks by Zachary Courser and Kevin Kosar for the American Enterprise Institute points out that “even at their peak, earmarks accounted for only 3% of total discretionary spending — and discretionary spending is only about a third of all federal outlays.”
In the first years of the earmark moratorium Federal spending and the federal deficit shrank as a share of the economy. But the picture got worse during Donald Trump’s presidency. A bipartisan spending spree took place even with earmarks gone.
The earmark ban didn’t even get rid of earmarks so much as it drove them underground. Members of Congress turned to “lettermarks”: Instead of specifying who should get federal money in bills or committee reports, they wrote letters to pressure the agencies administering the spending to direct it to favored recipients. The effect was to make such directed spending depend more on which party held the White House. Liberal Democrats in Congress got results from writing to President Barack Obama’s Labor Department to get stimulus funds, but Republicans generally didn’t.
Speaking of Obama, his hope was also dashed. “Trust and confidence” in Congress, as measured by Gallup, was not high a decade ago, but managed to sink further during the earmark-free decade. Congressmen do not seem to have had any difficulty getting themselves into scandals without earmarks. They have made do with tax fraud, insider trading and that old standby, sexual misconduct.
It’s possible that the earmark ban even lowered the repute of Congress, in an indirect way. Supporters of earmarks often argued that they helped the legislature function by giving its leaders carrots and sticks. The ban on earmarks may have made budget brinksmanship more common. But the effect should not be exaggerated. Rising partisanship surely played a larger role, and it was happening during the period of earmark proliferation.
Looking back over the last 20 years or so, earmarks appear to have been a symptom of larger trends rather than a cause. Congressmen rejected earmarks as they grew more concerned about federal spending, and have come back to them as they have shed those inhibitions. But earmarks don’t themselves determine spending levels, even indirectly. The ban didn’t achieve much, and lifting it will slightly strengthen an enfeebled Congress and weaken an overmighty presidency. One cheer, then, for the return.