If the Narrative Fits...

The assumption is that member of Congress are self-interested, greedy, obsessed with reelection and usually corrupt. Earmark coverage fits within that narrative.  Cheese Factories on the Moon, page 104)

Pet peeve. Media coverage of politics--but especially earmarks--fails to provide sufficient context for readers more often than not.

When the facts "confirm" the narrative why bother with context?

Case in point: a story published last week by the Center for Responsive Politics.  Janie Boschma reports that former House Appropriations Committee member Steve Rothman will join a Newark law firm that lobbies on behalf of the defense industry.

Boschma employs the "revolving door" metaphor to highlight Rothman's behavior as particularly objectionable.

Rothman served on the Defense Subcommittee of Appropriations and Boschma treads the familiar link between campaign contributions and "legislative favors."

...the defense industry is one Rothman knows well. Among his top defense contributors during his 14-year House career were BAE Systems, $42,300; General Dynamics, $35,000; Lockheed Martin, $33,500; Boeing, $32,000; Honeywell International, $28,000; and Finmeccanica SpA, $24,000. Altogether, the defense sector donated $277,850 to Rothman during his tenure.

That is a lot of money. What the author does not tell you is this: $277,850 represents 2.4% of the campaign money that Rothman raised during his 14-year career in Congress.  A look at CRP's own database reveals that Rothman raised $684,950 from transportation and public sector unions over the same period, almost two-and-a-half times the money he raised from defense interests.

And then a turn to the dramatic, Boschma notes the

...remarkable nexus between budgetary earmarks by Rothman and 11 other members of the subcommittee and campaign contributions...In 2007, Rothman teamed up with Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) to earmark $1.5 million in the 2008 budget for Frontier Performance Polymers to research lightweight packaging for military gear.

Once again, $1.5 million is a lot of money. But in 2008 Rothman, according to the CRP database, was able to earmark $13.6 million, mostly in the defense area. CRP could not link most of his earmarks to campaign contributions. Of the 19 earmarks they identify they link two to campaign contributions.

That is about 1 in 10. A "remarkable nexus;" really?

What does Frontier Performance Polymers do? It seeks to lessen the weight of military ammunition to save weight for purposes of transportation and lightening the load for members of the military in the field. One may or may not think that is a legitimate use of federal funds, but readers deserve to judge based on the facts, not the implicit assumption that Rothman and Frelinghuysen routinely flush taxpayer dollars down the drain.


I do not know Steve Rothman (or Rodney Frelinghuysen). I have never met him. I have never lived in New Jersey. I am not a lobbyist. I have never worked in the defense industry. I am just a lowly college professor on the West Coast. Maybe Rothman is guilty of some wrong-doing; I do not know.

It is not my purpose to defend Mr. Rothman or this earmark.

But I have some advice (source: Cheese Factories on the Moon) to offer to Ms. Boschma and other reporters when it comes to earmarks:

• Take the time to understand the process;
• Try to understand individual earmarks;
• Provide context;
• Do not overgeneralize, and;
• Be careful: Correlation does not equal causation.

--Sean Kelly

Praise for Cheese factories on the Moon

We received this via email over the weekend. We thought we'd share:
 
"I've just finished reading 'Cheese Factories on the Moon.' You and Scott Frisch have successfully married the benefits of academic expertise and political experience...you have added an untold and necessary chapter to the big story about congressional appropriations. Without reservation, this book should be required reading for every course on Congress; it also should be on the desk of every media analyst in the country."
 
Representative Glen Browder (D-AL)

Jeff Flake: Giant Killer

In 2008 arch-earmark-foe Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) initiated a full court press for his assignment to the Appropriations Committee. Supporters circulated an internet petition supporting his request. Despite a spirited fight, Flake was not assigned to the committee. He and his supporters attributed his failure to resistance from earmark defenders.

In the wake of the 2010 election, with the Republicans riding a wave of voter discontent fueled, in part, by disdain for earmarks, and with appropriators on their heels, Flake once again made a run at an appointment to the Appropriations Committee. Making his closing argument for an appointment in an Op-Ed in The Washington Post  Flake argued that earmarks were distracting the Appropriations Committee from its role as guardian of the Treasury:

Those who view earmarking as an expression of the "congressional prerogative" sell Congress short of its preeminent role as the first branch of government. As the defenders of earmarking are fond of saying, earmarks represent less than 2 percent of all federal spending. Precisely! By focusing on a measly 2 percent of spending, we have given up effective oversight on the remaining 98 percent.[1]

Flake argued that the committee, by focusing its efforts on earmarks, fails in the larger effort to closely scrutinize the more costly and more important expenditures. In the same Op-Ed he concluded that,

Without the earmark distraction, Congress can return to the deliberative process of authorization, appropriation and oversight, thus reining in spending abuses of the administration rather than simply piling on with spending abuses of our own.

 In an Appropriations Committee oversight hearing on Wednesday Flake attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for making grants worth a few hundred thousand dollars to a mime company in San Francisco and supporting an accordion festival.[2]

Those who supported Jeff Flake’s holy war on earmarks should be rolling their eyes, but we suspect they are not. Is this what Flake’s rebellion has become? Shifting the focus from a few silly-sounding earmarks to a few silly-sounding federal grants? Is this how Flake intended to wield the potent appropriations oversight power all along?

Or, perhaps Flake intends to go through the federal budget with a very, very, very, very fine-toothed comb.

The other irony here is the claim by earmark foes that expenditures determined through competitive, peer-reviewed, bureaucratic processes are superior to earmarks. The mimes and accordionists were funded using the competitive bureaucratic process boosted by earmark critics, yet they produced silly-sounding expenditures.

The fact is that many specific government expenditures, taken in isolation, sound silly. Case in point: recently the Department of Defense released a request for bids to repair a Koi Fish Pond at Travis Air Force Base in California. That sounds pretty silly to us.[3] And when silly sounding expenditures are brought to their attention, the media takes the bait every time.  But they miss the broader implications. In the debate over earmarks the media consistently reported on the silly-sounding earmarks; but they missed the larger debate about the congressional power of the purse and the ability of members of Congress to adapt broad federal programs to the needs of their states and districts. In this case the argument is not about a few silly-sounding grants, but whether the National Endowment for the Arts should continue to exist and receive funding. That is the argument on which the media should be reporting, and that is a debate that all Americans should have a voice in. 

Let’s be clear about the fiscal stakes.  Mr. Flake is focusing attention on a couple of grants that amount to a few hundred thousand dollars.  The total National Endowment for the Arts budget request for fiscal year 2012 is about $146 million, or less than one third of the amount this country spends on military bands in a year.[4]   Elimination of the entire National Endowment for the Arts would not make a dent in a deficit of $1,480,000,000,000. 

However, focusing the public’s attention on a few well chosen examples of “wasteful” spending will only contribute to creating the false impression that the budgetary imbalance is the result of wasteful spending and that balancing the federal budget can be easily accomplished. The public’s lack of understanding of the composition of the federal budget is well known, and it is easy to convince voters that silly spending is the root of our budgetary problems. 

Instead of focusing attention on the pittance we spend on mimes and accordion festivals, Mr. Flake might consider following Willie Sutton’s advice.  When asked why he robbed banks, Sutton famously replied “because that is where the money is.”  The money in the federal budget is in the Department of Defense, entitlement programs, and the flip side of earmarks, targeted tax breaks (known in Washington as tax expenditures).  If Mr. Flake truly cares about addressing our fiscal imbalance, he would be best to look to these programs instead of continuing to garner media attention by highlighting alleged waste in minuscule programs, the elimination of which will do nothing to solve the problem, but will only serve to promote anti-government feeling among an already cynical American public.  

             

[1] Jeff Flake, “An earmark fight Congress doesn't need,” November 12, 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111106060.html

[2] Erik Wasson, “GOP blasts NEA grants to 'Frisco mimes, accordion festival” May 11, 2011 http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/appropriations/160491-obama-arts-chief-grilled-at-house-appropriations-

[3] Repair Coy (sic) Fish Pond, Solicitation Number: F3ZT911081A002-PondRepair, Agency: Department of the Air Force, Office: Air Mobility Command, Location: 60th CONS https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=ec7591c232e932e108497c09c1e78b12&tab=core&_cview=1

[4] Walter Pincus. “Defense Department spends $500 million to strike up the bands” The Washington Post. September 6, 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/06/AR2010090603018.html?sid=ST2010090603042

Earmarks for the ages…

Long lost records from the Senate Appropriations Committee, in a story on the blog Booktryst. The records, contained in bound volumes discovered by a Northern California rare book collector, cover the years 1870 through the early 1900s. According to Stephen Gertz:

The ledgers, written almost exclusively in pen - both black and red ink – with some entries and notations in pencil, enumerate the annual appropriations for:

I. Agriculture, Army, Fortifications, Pensions, Post-Office, 1870-1909.
II. Diplomatic, District of Columbia Appropriations.
III. Legislative Appropriations, 1870-1901.
IV. Military Academy, Naval Appropriations, 1870-1909.
V. Sundry Civil Appropriations, 1870-1901.

Even a quick glance at the few high quality photos of individual pages at the Booktryst site reveals that earmarks are not a recent phenomenon. If one accepts the typical definition of an earmark (an expenditure targeted for a specific purpose in a specific location) then each page of these ledgers is replete with earmarks. Take for instance the provision on this page (right) for the Navy Yard at Mare Island, California (that’s a pretty specific location!). Among the specific expenditures indicated is a cottage for the electrician, navy yard roads, and a shed over the galvanizing plant (those are some pretty specific projects!).

The moral of the story is that when money is appropriated it must be spent somewhere and it must be spent on something. From the beginning of the Republic Congress assumed its responsibility under Article I, section 9 of the constitution to appropriate funds. How did it accomplish this? By allocating geographic and project specific expenditures as is illustrated in these ledgers. Earmarks are not “new,” they are as old as the Republic and, practically speaking, necessary.

The “criminalization” of earmarks by groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense and the media seriously undermines what was historically a congressional power aimed at vesting the “power of the purse” in the institution most directly accountable to the people. Advocates of banning earmarks are at odds with our Republican principles and, as these documents illustrate, at odds with our history.

Are Earmarks Like Pornography? A Few Results from an Internet-Based Survey

As the FY 2011 appropriations cycle becomes white hot, controversy over earmarks once again surfaces, presenting one more sticking point for passing an omnibus appropriations bill. Earmark foes are demanding that earmarks be stripped from the omnibus or the president should veto the bill and demand that the earmarks be expunged.

Reporters have again dutifully taken the bait and are writing their obligatory stories ridiculing select earmarks that are included in the bill (while failing to do any research into the earmarks to determine whether they might be justified).

Where would the American public be without the media pointing out these “pet projects” for us?

According to Ronald Utt of the Heritage Foundation, we do not need the media’s help. He argues that:

In at least one way, earmarks are like pornography: There's no universally accepted definition. Potter Stewart, a justice on the Supreme Court, famously said of pornography in 1964, ‘I know it when I see it.’ Well, most Americans know earmarks when they see them.[1]

Critics of earmarks extol the virtues of government expenditures determined through competitive, neutral, bureaucratic processes. “Peer review,” for instance, is held up as the gold standard for determining project funding. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, which rely on panels of experts to objectively judge research proposals, are held up as prime examples of how projects should be funded.

If “most Americans know earmarks when they see them” they certainly will know an expenditure determined through a competitive, neutral, bureaucratic processes when they see it too.

We were curious: Provided with examples of earmarks and bureaucratically determined grant projects will individuals be able to consistently distinguish between the two?

Given the constant drumbeat of negativity provided by “watchdog groups” and the media, will individuals consistently conclude that spending driven by bureaucratic decisions are consistently “better” (i.e., less “wasteful”) than earmarked expenditures?

To partially satisfy our curiosity we conducted a non-random internet-based survey. While the results are not representative of American public opinion, they are suggestive.[2]

Respondents were given a short description of a real project and asked to identify it as either an earmark or a bureaucratically determined project (see Figure 1). The wording of our items is specifically intended to present information about the earmark outside of any particular “frame” of reference that indicate what kind of project it is, or that will bias individual evaluations of the earmark, that is, whether it is “good or bad.”

Figure 1: This illustrates the format that was used to present the projects to respondents. Answers were presented in random order

Do respondents know an earmark when they see it?

According to our results (see Table 1) respondents correctly identified the earmark projects about 60% of the time on average, and the bureaucratic projects slightly over half of the time (approximately 53% on average). About 40% of respondents incorrectly identified bureaucratically determined expenditures as earmarks.

Table 1: This table indicates that most respondents correctly distinguished between earmark expenditures and expenditures determined by bureaucratic processes.

Among the projects we presented to respondents the Galaxy Formation Study was incorrectly identified as an earmark by almost two out of three respondents and the Grizzly DNA research study was identified as bureaucratically determined by almost half of the respondents.

Averages can be deceiving. Often groups are able to produce accurate predictions while individual respondents remain highly inaccurate. How accurate were individual respondents when it came to correctly identifying all eight projects?

Figure 2: Individual respondents were not very successful at consistently distinguishing earmark projects from bureaucratically determined projects.

• Only one respondent correctly identified all of the projects; and eight more correctly identified seven out of eight projects;
• Twenty percent of respondents were correct three times out of four;
• More than half failed to correctly identify more than half of the projects;
• Almost one-third correctly identified three or fewer of the eight projects.

In short, the ability of individual respondents to distinguish between earmarks and projects determined through neutral, bureaucratic processes is far from perfect; in fact, it is only slightly better than the flip of a coin for the majority of our respondents.

Do respondents think earmarks are more wasteful?

One of the primary criticisms of earmarks is that they constitute wasteful spending. With regard to each of the projects that we presented to respondents we asked them whether the expenditure was a “waste of taxpayer dollars.” Respondents were given five responses (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, or strongly agree). Responses for each of the projects are displayed in Table 2.

Overall none of these projects mustered a majority of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed that the project was wasteful. The two projects that came closest to a majority were bureaucratic projects not earmarks. The two projects that were judged “least wasteful” were earmark-related projects. Based on the judgment of our respondents it is not the case that earmarks are consistently more wasteful than bureaucratic project grants.[3]

Furthermore our results (not shown) indicate that those respondents who correctly identified a project as an earmark were more likely to agree that it was “wasteful.” In sum, in the minds of our respondents earmarks are not equated with profligacy.

When asked to choose between funding the Woodstock Museum (an earmark) and the Grateful Dead Archive (a competitive grant-funded project) a stunning 85% of respondents chose the Woodstock Museum. This is even more stunning since the $2 million earmark for the Museum—sought by then-Senator Hillary Clinton—was so effectively ridiculed by earmark (and Clinton) critics as spending taxpayers’ money on a “hippie museum” that Senator Clinton requested that the earmark be stripped from the appropriations bill of which it was a part.

What do we make of these results?

We need to repeat, once again, that the results presented here are based on a non-scientific sample of opinions; they should not be construed as representative of broad public opinion. They do suggest, however, that public opinion surrounding earmarks deserves some attention.

Perceptions of public opinion on the issue are largely built on media coverage of activated opinion, the views of anti-earmark members of Congress, and Washington-based anti-earmark groups. Yet in a rare data-based finding the Pew Research Center reported that 53% of Americans were more likely to vote for a member of Congress with a record of bringing government projects to the district; only 12% were less likely to vote for such a member and 33% said it made no difference.[4]

It seems that without the “help” of watchdog groups or the media who identify earmarks for the public, individuals may be quite bad at distinguishing between earmark and competitively awarded projects. Furthermore, without the “help” of watchdog groups or the media our respondents did not intuitively equate earmarks with wasteful spending. In the absence of media framing that describes the most egregious sounding earmarks implying waste, individuals do not find earmark expenditures to be any more wasteful than competitively awarded grants and projects.

Politicians seem to posses some special insight into what the American public seems to “think” about earmarks. Announcing his change of heart on earmarks and his support for a Senate Republican moratorium on earmarks Senator Mitch McConnell said that by continuing to pursue earmarks the “..Democrats are ignoring the wishes of the American people.” President Obama said shortly after the midterm elections that he was “a strong believer that the earmarking process in Congress isn’t what the American people really want to see when it comes to making tough decisions about how taxpayer dollars are spent.”

Based on the Pew finding alone anyone who purports knowing what Americans “think” about earmarks is just dead wrong. If public opinion is half as nuanced as our small survey suggests anti-earmark politicians may be overplaying their hands considerably.

Endnotes

[1] Ronald Utt “Eliminating earmarks” http://www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2006/04/Eliminating-earmarks. Accessed December 16, 2010.

[2] These data are the result of a non-random sample of individuals responding to an internet survey. The sample was generated via social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter, and through other traditional word of mouth techniques. The results of this non-scientific survey are not, and should not be, represented as indicative of American public opinion; they are, however, suggestive of patterns that might be emerge from a larger, more sophisticated scientific survey.

[3] On our scale, which ranged from 1 to 5 (strongly disagree to strongly agree), the earmark projects had an average score of 1.72 compared to 2.75 for the bureaucratic projects, indicating that the earmarks had more support on average than the other projects. This difference is significant at the p < .000 level (t=12.45).

[4] In our study 30% of our respondents report being a little or much more likely to vote for a member of Congress who pursues earmarks compared to 18% who are a little or much less likely to vote for a member who pursues earmarks. In our sample 53% of respondents report that the pursuit of earmarks would not influence their vote choice.

Cheese Factories on Wordle

Just having a little fun between meetings today. We took the text of our entire manuscript and entered it into Wordle (http://www.wordle.net) and generated the word cloud to the left.  If you did not know that our book was about Congress and earmarks the word cloud tells the story.  Try it yourself; it is a lot of fun.

Parochialism is the Point (sort of)

The election is over. Republicans won the House and increased their numbers in the Senate. Now the media are beginning to focus on how the newly-empowered Republicans will govern.  No longer are earmarks a “talking point;” now they are part of the discussion about how the Republicans will run the House, and how the Republicans might influence the generation of earmarks in the Senate.

One prominent criticism leveled at earmarks is that they are “parochial,” that is, that they are meant to benefit the narrow interests of a single congressional district or state.  The implication is that they do so at the expense of the rest of the country.

In the Senate one of the primary opponents of earmarks is Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).  In the weeks leading up to the election Coburn often sought to cast earmarks as parochial. In an interview with us a few weeks before the election Coburn stuck to this theme: “Earmarks promote parochialism…The oath of a U.S. Senator is to do what is in the best interest of the country as a whole.”[1]  The next day he repeated this same complaint to the White House fiscal commission: “Our problem is we’ve put parochial concerns ahead of the long-term interests of the country.”[2] 

The earmarks-as-parochialism meme long ago captured the media narrative surrounding earmarks.  The common use of the term “pet project” to describe earmarked expenditures communicates that point pretty well.  We expect that politicians will continue capitalizing on this narrative, which captures the attention of reporters.

What is mostly misunderstood—by many people, by many in the media, and by most politicians—is that parochialism is (partially) the point of the design of our political institutions.

In Federalist Paper #58 James Madison speaks in almost poetic terms of the wisdom of investing the “power of the purse,” the power to spend money, in Congress. He says Congress’ power of the purse is “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.” The founders sought to provide a means by which “the people” could exercise a more direct influence over federal spending.

Parochialism has its benefits. Conservatives in particular--but others too--bemoan the “one size fits all” nature of federal government programs.  Using earmarks members of Congress can capture programmatic funding to adapt federal programs to local needs that might be overlooked by Washington bureaucracies. Earmarks provide an opportunity for members of Congress to offer “redress” to their constituents.

A “pet project” that results from naked self interest and that is anchored in parochialism is not less impressive because of its origins. In the absence of Senator Pete Domenici’s (R-NM) parochialism—his concern for New Mexico based Department of Energy scientists as the Cold War wound down and peace broke out— the Human Genome Project would never have taken off and produced one of the signal achievements of American science. Parochialism has its benefits.

Part of the genius of the institutional design we inherited from the founders was the conscious and creative incorporation of parochialism into our governing system. Earmarks are just one echo of the efforts of the founders to build a political system that was simultaneously responsive to the demands of the people and responsive to the national interest.

---

[1]  Senator Tom Coburn. Phone interview with the authors, September 28, 2010.

[2]  Walter Alarkon, “Fiscal panel poised to target earmarks” The Hill 9/29/10; Accessed November 5, 2010. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/121751-fiscal-panel-poised-to-target-earmarks

Once Again Earmarks Prove to be the Better Choice for our Democracy

NPR Reporter Audie Cornish is reporting on efforts by members of Congress to influence the expenditure of stimulus funds in their states and districts (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130602175).  Capitalizing on leaked documents and records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the Center for Public Integrity demonstrates that foes of the stimulus who voted against the legislation--and those who trumpeted the fact that the legislation was earmark free--subsequent sent letters to the executive bureaucracy seeking to gain support for projects requested by their constituents.


One of the central arguments of Cheese Factories on the Moon is that in the absence of earmarks spending decisions will be pushed into the bureaucracy where it is difficult--often impossible--to identify how spending decisions are being made.  In fact, it takes herculean efforts involving FOIA requests and anonymous leaks to get the information.  In the meantime, the earmark process is now fully transparent, only requiring a few mouse clicks to determine who asked for what. 

It was especially amusing that the primary champions of abolishing earmarks in favor of "non-political" bureaucratic decision making, Taxpayers for Common Sense, featured prominently in the story, fail to grasp that their crusade against earmarks will ultimately push spending decisions further into the deepest, darkest recesses of the federal bureaucracy.   In fact, in the "good old days" before earmarks were "democratized"-- that is, they became used routinely outside of the members of the Appropriations Committee--the chairmen of the subcommittees would routinely make calls directly to the bureaucracy to direct how particular monies would be spent. 

The longtime Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Bill Natcher (D-KY), was famous for insisting on not including earmarks in his subcommittee's bills. Year after year he would pass bills that were earmark free.  Apocryphal stories abound of Senator Byrd on bended knee begging for an earmark in a final Labor-H bill only to be rebuffed by Natcher.  Once the bill was passed Natcher would simply call up the departments and let them know how the money was to be spent (a completely untraceable "phonemark").

We interviewed Ryan Alexander and Steve Ellis recently for our follow up book Pork: Who Gets What, How, and Why and they seemed, in our estimation, to have little understanding about the earmark process (that holds for most of the reformers we interviewed), or how the changes they promote would lead to LESS transparency rather than more.

Pushing spending decisions into the bureaucracy not only undermines transparency but it removes the element of democratic accountability that is present in the earmarking process.  Bureaucrats, as hard working and good intentioned as they may be, are not democratically accountable; if they make bad decisions we have no democratic means of removing them from office.  Members of Congress, on the other hand, are democratically accountable; if they champion a bad earmark they can be voted out of office and, with the recent changes in the transparency of earmarks we have all the information to act on our democratic impulses if voters choose to.

Earmarks and Archives

Earmarks and archives are two topics near and dear to our hearts, so we obviously took notice when they both came under attack by Taxpayers for Common Sense last week.[1]  The interest group expressed disdain for a pair of $10 million earmarks included in the Defense Appropriations bill to support the organization and preservation of the congressional papers collections of late-Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and late-Representative John Murtha (D-PA).  In addition the appropriations would support the creation of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the John P. Murtha Center for Public Service at the University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Before continuing it is important to make clear that earmarks in support of congressional papers collections are exceedingly rare; at most there have been a dozen such earmarks in the history of the country (much to the chagrin of university libraries and university administrators nationwide).

We are college professors.  Our daily lives are consumed with teaching students about American politics and political institutions, and conducting academic research focused on Congress, the president, and appropriations politics.  In our research we rely heavily on the archived papers of members of Congress and, to some extent, presidents.  Between the two of us we have used about 100 of these collections; we have written three books (with two more in progress) and a number of academic journal articles.  Archived papers provide an opportunity to “get behind the scenes” of the member’s office and understand politics as it happens in real time, and to collect data that are otherwise impossible to access.  These collections provide insight into the legislative process and the making of American history that, if unpreserved, will be lost to the ravages of time and benign neglect.

The papers of members of Congress are peppered throughout the country.  Considered the personal property of the member of Congress he or she, upon retirement, defeat, or death may, at their discretion, donate their papers to any willing repository.  More often than not if the member does donate their papers (remember it is at their discretion) they wind up at a university in the member’s old district or state.

In most cases there is little or no funding made available to organize and preserve these collections, unless the member provides it or another donor can be found. Hundreds or thousands of boxes (depending on how long the member served, whether they served in the House or Senate, and how good they were about saving their files) arrive at the university library.[2]  The library may or may not have a dedicated archivist on staff; if they do the chances are good that the archivist is not trained to cope with collections as large and complex as those that come from a member’s office.[3] 

For these paper collections to be useful to students, academics, and others they must be processed and described and that costs money; money for staff, space, proper storage, and the like. 

The research value of the two collections is beyond debate.  As intensive users of these resources we guarantee that we will be among the first to exploit the immense research potential of these collections.  Senator Kennedy’s papers will provide insight into some of the most important legislation to pass through Congress in the last 40 years: Voting Rights, Immigration Laws, health care policy, and much more.  Representative Murtha’s papers will provide tremendous insight into the appropriations process and defense policy among other topics.

Does it take a multimillion dollar investment?  In most cases, no; but in these two cases Congress has taken the extra step of investing in centers that memorializes these two important figures and will provide a service to the broader community.  The Kennedy the Institute for the U.S. Senate is a one-of-a-kind center dedicated to the study of the Senate; there is no center in the country devoted to the study of the Senate.  Relative to the U.S. House the Senate receives little scholarly attention; a center focused on the study of the Senate could promote more intensive study of the Senate and, more importantly, provide a context for better educating the public on this complex institution.  Students at U. Mass Boston, and visitors from around the country—many of whom are visiting Boston to learn more about its rich history and place in the story of America—will have the opportunity to learn more about the Senate. 

Over the last several decades it has become increasingly difficult to convince students of the value of public service; we know from experience. The pervasive message coming out of our politics is that “government is the enemy.”  Who wants to work for “the enemy?”  The Murtha Center for Public Service (like the Stennis Center at Mississippi State University) could provide leadership in promoting public service as a career path, not only in Western Pennsylvania but throughout the country. 

In our view the mission that each of these centers will undertake is important to the national interest.  What is more important than understanding our democratic institutions and working in service to the public?  If anything we would advocate for more centers pursuing such lofty goals.  Better understanding of our national institutions helps democratic citizens develop trust in these institutions, understand the potential and the limitations of our political institutions, and inoculates them against demagoguery aimed at tearing down these bulwarks of democracy.

But, one might ask: “Are there programs within the federal government, subject to peer review, that could fund such projects?” Yes; but they are woefully underfunded.  Furthermore, because they are peer reviewed there is a built-in bias against using the funds to preserve the collections of “political elites.” For decades the academic study of history has focused on “public history”—shying away from “great man” theories of history—exhibiting a preference for focusing on collaborations with the public that preserve the collective history of groups, movements, and the like.  Thus, all things being equal, the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of Santa Cruz likely would receive competitive funding before an archive focused on a member of Congress.

One might also ask: “Could Congress create a program that would fund institutions that receive these collections in a more routine way; in a way that does not require an earmark?” Absolutely; but pundits, op-ed pages, and groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense would be lining up to criticize Congress for spending money on its former members, and scrutinizing the choice of which university got the papers.  Critics of Congress would, no doubt, concoct conspiracy theories and check with the Federal Election Commission to see how much money employees of the university donated to the member’s electoral campaigns over her career and suggesting a quid pro quo arrangement.

In the end earmarks are the only effective mechanism that the Congress has for preserving these collections and promoting larger goals like studying the Senate or promoting public service.  Rather than discouraging Congress from such action we should be encouraging Congress to enact a policy aimed at funding the preservation of the congressional collections and promoting the study of our extraordinary representative institution.

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[1] Taxpayers for Common Sense Weekly Wastebasket, “Uncle Sam Shouldn’t Bankroll Lawmaker Libraries” http://www.taxpayer.net/search_by_category.php?action=view&proj_id=3692&category=Wastebasket&type=Project, accessed August 6, 2010.

[2] The congressional papers of former Representative, Senator, Vice Presidential and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole (R-KS) reportedly filled an entire railway boxcar!

[3] The challenges associated with these collections spring, in part, from the fact that a member’s office is akin to a small business.  They handle hundreds or thousands of communications with constituents every week and employ several (to dozens) of staff to track public policy issues and legislation.  The Congressional Papers Roundtable is a formal grouping within the Society of American Archivists specializing in issues specifically related to the complexities of organizing and preserving congressional papers collections.  [As a follower of their email list I have seen quite a few emails from librarians that read “We just received this enormous collection of documents. Help!  What do I do now?!” –SQK]

Reflections on Pork and Credit-Claiming in the Ruins of Ancient Rome

by Sean Kelly

When he died Senator Robert Byrd reportedly had 11 post offices and 2 airports in the state of West Virginia named after him.  After the death of Senator Ted Kennedy--owing to an appropriations earmark placed in the Defense Appropriations bill--Boston, Massachusetts became the future home of a center for the study of the U.S. Senate named for the Senator. The main terminal of the airport in Anchorage, Alaska carries the name of Senator Ted Stevens. Entering Scranton, Pennsylvania one drives into town on the Joseph McDade Highway; also in Pennsylvania one can cruise the spacious Bud Schuster Highway.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International
Airport. Photo by the author

For many Americans the appearance of the name of a member of Congress (or any other politician) on a public works project is particularly objectionable; it smacks of self-promotion. Congressional earmarks are often used to fund these kinds of projects. Cast as the “corrupt byproducts” of the legislative process, earmarks and the projects that they fund are often considered illustrative of the “obsession” that members of Congress have with reelection. In the examples cited above the member of Congress is explicitly memorialized by having their name posted on their achievement. In many, many other cases members of Congress claim credit for their accomplishments in press releases, by pointing to them in town hall meetings, and stump speeches as demonstrations of the members’ concern for their constituents’ welfare.

Credit-claiming is often referred to as if it were a behavior unique to American politicians who seek to attach their names (figuratively and sometimes literally) to particularized material benefits that they deliver to their constituencies.[1]

Credit-claiming is more common across space and time than many Americans might think.  A research group based at the State University of New York, Albany is engaged in a cross-national examination of “pork” in a cross section of countries.[2]  Traveling under a variety of names, and generated by different processes, “pork” in other countries is similarly an opportunity for representatives to be patrons of local projects.[3]  From a comparative perspective the fundamental insight of this group is that pork and credit-claiming are not unusual features of American politics, but are more general features of many representative systems.

So I should not have been surprised (though of course I was) when, on a recent trip to Italy, I came across evidence of “pork” in the middle of ruins of ancient Rome. On our second day in Rome we made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Roman Coliseum.  As I stood outside its walls looking over the massive structure, which would be considered an amazing feat of engineering in any era, the first thought that entered my mind (not surprising for a political scientist who studies pork) was: “I know this. This is an enormous public works project!” 

Engraving from the Roman Coliseum.
Photo by the author.

Upon entering I was quickly drawn to an engraved marble slab with the name of a long-forgotten Roman Senator who used his position and his patronage to support this central feature of Roman society and entertainment. Having his name on display helped him to maintain his position within Roman society; such patronage was expected of Roman Senators.  With his name on full public display this Senator communicated to the people who visited the Coliseum (which included a wide swath of Roman society) his position of authority within the social structure of Rome and the Empire, and promoting himself and his family more generally, indicating his power, and securing his family‘s future position in the Roman hierarchy.  In short, this Senator was claiming credit.

Of course the most dramatic public works projects throughout Rome belonged to the Emperor.  These projects were meant to benefit the public (through employment and public accommodation), promote commerce, and to entertain, to be sure, but also to project the power of the leader by illustrating his piousness, his conquests in war, and his beneficence (real or imagined) toward the people, while casting his image in the broader context of Roman history.  The images in the reliefs that decorate the arches, buildings, and spires were meant to both “claim credit” for public works and to project authority.[4]

At a fundamental level the structures and monuments of Rome--bearing the images, names, and actions of Emperors and Senators--reflect a constant in politics: the desire on the part of political leaders to gain public recognition for providing public benefits.

Alexander Hamilton writing in the Federalist Papers--arguing against including term limits for the president in the Constitution--asserted that “…the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct…”[5] He suggested that it was the vanity of politicians that would cause them to “make the best use” of his time in power, fearing the negative judgment of the public by way of electoral defeat, public scorn, and perhaps derision.  From his point of view it the was the vanity of politicians that would make a politician “unwilling to risk the consequences of an abuse of his opportunities [in office]”--where he would be judged in the light of history.

There are, of course, hazards in comparing ancient Rome and contemporary American politics.[6] But wandering through the remains, and observing the repeated examples of overt credit-claiming, reminded me that there are some things about politics that remain fairly constant.

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^[1] As David Mayhew reminds us, it is critical that the claim of credit be credible, that is, that it is within the realm of possibility that the political actor could credibly deliver the material benefit through his or her efforts.  David Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection, (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1974.

^[2] Robert Nakamura, Mark Baskin, and Malcolm Russell-Einhorn, “Constituency Development Funds and Legislative Strengthening.”  Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, CA April 2010.

^[3] This seems to be the case especially in political systems where representation is based on geography, that is, where the representative is charged with promoting the interests of a population contained in a particular geographic district or region (in the U.S. case, a congressional district or state). 

^[4] Lest one believe it unlikely that an Emperor would deign to “credit claim,” Augustus “boasted in his Res Gestae (19-20 and the summary 2-3) of repairing eighty-two temples, of renovating all five of Rome's existing aqueducts and of restoring the two key basilicas, the Julia and the Aemilia.” M. K. Thornton “Julio-Claudian Building Programs: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry”  Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 35,1:35.

^[5] Federalist Papers #72 “The Same Subject Continued, and Re-Eligibility of the Executive Considered.”

^[6] For instance, in Rome projects were funded directly from the coffers of individuals whether gained through the spoils of war or by collecting rents from the lower classes, whereas in the U.S. projects are funded through a public treasury stocked by way of taxation.  Public works in Rome often were the products of slave labor so that, unlike contemporary public works, they were not necessarily solely intended to promote employment for Roman citizens, though they provided substantial economic stimulus nonetheless (see “Julian Claudian Building Programs“ and M.K. Thornton and R.L. Thornton  “ The Financial Crisis of A.D. 33: A Keynesian Depression?”  The Journal of Economic History, 50,3:655-662).

The Paradox of Earmark Reform

Earlier this year House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dbavid Obey (D-WI) announced a ban on earmarks for private for-profit companies in House Appropriations bills.  Like earlier earmark reforms--public disclosure of earmark requests, public posting of earmark requests, and listing earmarks in committee reports, to name a few--the aim of Chairman Obey’s dictum was to increase public confidence in the appropriations process by responding to a demand of Washington-based “watchdog groups.” Over the past several decades these groups have mercilessly attacked the practice of congressional earmarks arguing , without much supporting evidence, that they increase federal spending, are inherently wasteful, and inevitably lead to corruption.

Ink and indignation are predictably hemorrhaging from Washington, DC over the recent revelation that private firms have discovered loopholes in Obey’s ban allowing them to gain access to earmark funds.  Reporters from The New York Times and the Seattle Times cite cases where for-profit companies formed non-profit organizations eligible for earmarked funds, and other cases where for-profit companies have partnered with non-profits or universities that assist their research, allowing the companies to skirt the ban.[1] These strategies have been pilloried by watchdogs and the media as additional examples of the “corruptness” of earmarks, and the basis of repeated demands for further earmark reform or even a complete ban on the practice.

Obey’s ban while well-intentioned was ill-advised.  The Senate Appropriations Committee did not enact a similar ban, which provided an immediate alternative strategy for private companies seeking earmarks; just approach the Senate.  Further, favoring non-profit organizations over for-profit businesses is an arbitrary policy.  The marketplace of good ideas does not observe strict adherence to the for-profit/not for-profit distinction that Obey codified in the reform.  For-profit companies are often developing important products and technologies that are worthy of public support.  One example is the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) that is widely used in Iraq to protect soldiers from improvised explosive devices.  With only one customer (the Pentagon) the original designers and producers of the MRAP relied on earmark funding (in part) to develop and produce the first vehicles.  With design and production capability in place, when the need for MRAP vehicles in Iraq became obvious large-scale production could quickly ramp up.  In the absence of earmarks it likely would have taken years to design, test, and produce the MRAP vehicle that has saved the lives of thousands of soldiers.

The more fundamental problem with Obey’s ban springs from what we refer to as the “paradox of reform.”  The intention of the reform was to increase public confidence in the earmarking process by responding to one of the many objections of watchdog groups; the result, inevitably, is precisely the opposite. Opponents of earmarks use the imperfect results of the reform to intensify their attacks on congressional appropriations earmarks and their reports, amplified by the media, drive down public trust in the process. This paradox was evident following the first round of earmark reforms.  Rules that required listing earmarks in committee reports provided easy access to earmark data that, when combined with data on campaign contributions from the Federal Election Commission, could form the basis of a contributions-for-earmarks conspiracy, which is not well supported by the data (but disseminated by the groups and dutifully reported by the media).[2]  In this round of reform, for-profit companies skirt an ill-conceived and impossible to enforce reform; the resulting examples of the “failure of the reform” are presented as evidence of the “corruption” that sparked demands for the reform from the group in the first place. Watchdogs, in turn, demand new stricter reforms, supported by predictable public outrage,  with the eventual aim of driving Congress out of the earmarking business altogether (and, by the way, their loud objections do not hurt their fundraising efforts).

In the final analysis the only way to satisfy earmark critics is to ban appropriations earmarks altogether.  This would irreparably upset the Constitutional order envisioned by the framers of the Constitution who granted the power of the purse to the Congress to make government spending more responsive to public demands, and to balance congressional power against presidential power.  In the absence of appropriations earmarks the only recourse available for federal funding of local and national priorities are appeals by citizens to a faceless, non-transparent, and electorally unaccountable federal bureaucracy incapable of appreciating the priorities and concerns of people in communities across the country (except, perhaps, those cities, towns, and organizations with the resources to hire expert grant writers to help them jump through the hoops of the federal grants and contracts process).  Concentrating the power of the purse in the executive branch would further inflate the power of the executive branch and undermine the power of Congress, the people‘s branch.

Most of the cases of earmark abuse that were uncovered (and there are fewer than most of the public would believe) came to light through the legislative process itself; the legislative process has many of the features of a self-regulating system.  Reforms that improve transparency are good; most in Congress and most in the lobbying community supports reforms that improve transparency.  Reforms without a basis in policy, or that are meant to appease watchdog groups are ill-advised at best and, at worst, could erode the unique balance between the public and our political institutions that our founders sought to embody in the Constitution.


[1] Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon, “Companies find ways to bypass ban on earmarks” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/us/politics/05earmarks.html accessed July 4, 2010; David Heath “Congressman Dicks finds way around earmarks rule” http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012294255_dicks07.html
The Seattle Times accessed July 6, 2010.

[2] Scott Frisch and Sean Kelly
“Earmarks and campaign contributions: less than meets the eye.”  http://www.cheesefactoriesonthemoon.blogspot.com accessed July 6, 2010.

Interview on LATalkRadio.com

We did our first interview about the book with LATalkRadio.com hosted by Brendan Huffman.  Click the title above to give it a listen.  It runs about 20 minutes.

Four Myths About Congressional Earmarks

Never has a quote so accurately summed up the arguments of earmark critics, and rarely is a quote as demonstrably false as this one from a New York Times article published on July 4, 2010.[1]

Critics say spending on earmarks, which added $16 billion to the federal budget last year, diverts money from higher priorities, typically does not require competitive bids and is often directed to experimental research that will never be used.

The authors of the article echo the arguments made by “watchdog” groups failing to critically assess their statements.  In this essay we take on the four myths about congressional earmarks that are embedded in this quote.

When the appropriations subcommittees make spending decisions they begin with a pot of money, a 302(b) allocation. This is the pot of money available to the subcommittee to spend on the programs that are funded by their bill. It is up to the subcommittee to decide on what this money will be spent.  A small percentage of this money will be “earmarked” for some specific purposes.  The subcommittee has not “added” money to the pot.  Earmarks do not add spending the budget anymore than choosing to purchase a box of pasta instead of a pound of bananas (i.e., earmarking funds for pasta) adds to one’s bill at the supermarket.  In fact, Congress often approves spending levels lower than those requested by the president shifting some of the savings to earmarked accounts.

Critics argue that earmarks divert funding from higher priorities.  What constitutes a “higher priority” is a value judgment and the pivotal issue is: Who decides what constitutes a “higher priority”? Without explicitly stating it critics of earmarks argue that the president (relying mostly on unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats making decisions under less than transparent circumstances) should decide spending priorities and Congress should simply rubber stamp those decisions.  In granting the “power of the purse” to the Congress the framers of the Constitution sought to situate this power as closely to the people as possible, to make government democratically accountable for spending decisions for setting priorities.

Furthermore, critics of earmarks fail to support their contention that the executive branch makes “better” decisions about priorities than does the Congress. For instance, as the problem of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) became apparent early in the Iraq War the lack of armor for military vehicles was defended by the Bush Administration.  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said “you go to war with the military you have.”  Being kept alive by earmarks included in the Defense Appropriations bill—to the chagrin of the White House—was  an idea that might help soldiers in the field; the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle.  MRAPs were not a “priority” of the executive (the repository of superior decision-makers), but Congress funneled funding into the project and ultimately saved soldiers’ lives in Iraq.  Likewise, the Predator Drone, which is used widely in Afghanistan and Iraq and is acknowledged for saving the lives of American soldiers, was resisted by the Pentagon and "pushed" on them through congressional earmarks.  Who wants an unmanned attack drone?  It is now one of the main arrows in the quiver of those fighting terrorism abroad.

Critics complain about earmarks being used for “experimental research that will never be used.”  To some extent this is probably true; some ideas will pan out while others will not; but that is why they are called experiments.  As academics we have hard drives full of data that were collected and never produced meaningful results; papers that were written and never published; grant proposals that were written and never funded; and the list goes on.  Experimentation and failure (and success) are natural components of the process of discovery.  Making precisely this point Albert Einstein famously said: “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?”  Anyone engaged in research will tell you that there are no guarantees of success.  Are there any successes associated with earmarks?  What bigger gamble than to earmark initial funding to map the human genome—considered an impossibility by most of the scientific community in the 1980s—which ultimately produced medical and technological discoveries that will fuel biotechnology for decades to come.

            In one regard critics of earmarks are somewhat correct: Earmarked funds are often awarded without competitive bidding.  However even this requires some context.  First, the executive bureaucracy often grants money without competitive bidding (think here of the billions and billions spend on no-bid contracts associated with the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars).  Somehow the critics would have us believe that non-competitive grants from the executive are superior to congressional earmarks, despite the fact that no-bid contracts through the executive are far less transparent than congressional earmark awards.  Second, as we discuss at much greater length in our book, earmark requests do compete with one another within the appropriations process.  Despite popular belief not all earmark requests are granted.  Our research on requests for earmarks in the Interior and Military Construction subcommittees suggests that less than one in four earmarks are granted.  The earmarks that are included in appropriations emerge from a brutally competitive environment.

            We end this essay as we ended our first essay: “The use of appropriations earmarks is one political issue where the media consistently fails to exercise balance in their coverage.  While media outlets routinely take pains to seek out conflicting views on even the most widely accepted truths (e.g., global climate change, evolution), it is rare to hear dissenting voices on the issue of appropriations earmarks.”

           

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[1] Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon, “Companies Find Ways to Bypass Ban on Earmarks” New York Times July 4, 2010.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/us/politics/05earmarks.html?hp