White House posts earmarks on website

Pet spending projects that lawmakers put in the 2005 budget are listed. The administration's requests aren't.

By Nicole Gaouette and Tom Hamburger

Times Staff Writers

April 5, 2007

WASHINGTON — In a direct challenge to Congress and the way it does business, the White House on Wednesday unveiled an online list of all the pet spending projects lawmakers tucked in the federal budget for the 2004-05 fiscal year.

The Internet database details spending known as earmarks, funds that lawmakers funnel to projects, programs and sometimes even specific recipients without going through the normal budget review — such as the $25 million provided to California spinach farmers in the recent Iraq spending bill.

The amount of earmarked money has tripled in the last decade. And in early January, just as Democrats were taking power, President Bush challenged Congress to halve the number and amount of earmarks, from a record $19 billion in fiscal 2005.

"You didn't vote them into law. I didn't sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law," Bush said in his State of the Union address. "The time has come to end this practice."

The database, which allows the public to search for earmarks by state and by agency but not by name of the sponsoring lawmaker, is the most comprehensive list produced by the government. But Democrats pointed out Wednesday that it did not include the earmarks the president and his administration requested.

The list includes 13,496 earmarks, of which 1,182 went to California recipients for a total of $1.7 billion, the most of any state.

Beneficiaries included Los Angeles-based nonprofit companies — such as Fashion Business Inc. ($50,000 for workforce training) and the Jewish Vocational Service ($198,000 to train certified nursing assistants) — and Arcata-based Internews Network, which got nearly $8 million, mostly for training Indonesian journalists.

Other top recipients included Alaska, which got earmarks for agricultural research on northern climate crops ($1.6 million) and seafood waste ($1.2 million).

The website is the latest effort on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to shine light into the hidden realm of earmarks. For years, a few lone congressional protesters — Arizona Republicans Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake to name two — attempted to halt the rampant growth of earmarks, which soared during the years Republicans were in control of Congress.

Members of both parties defend earmarking as a way for Congress to put attention on local concerns when executive-branch agencies are unresponsive. They are also important to congressional leaders in building their power as well as luring campaign contributions.

But in 2005, earmarking became a public concern. It emerged at the center of the case against former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe), now in prison for securing federal funding for individuals who provided him personal benefits.

It was also the basis for much of the wealth amassed by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted of bribery and a bogus casino deal. He referred to the House Appropriations Committee as "the favor factory."

Flake hailed the database as a step forward. "Whenever any members of Congress can basically write a check to a group at home without any real oversight, and when people in Congress basically will look the other way if you'll offer them the same courtesy when they offer earmarks, you'll have something ripe for abuse," Flake said. "We shouldn't be surprised when we have a Duke Cunningham."

The congressman, who puts out a weekly e-mail spotlighting the "egregious earmark of the week," said the database "should help those of us who think this process is really short-circuiting the traditional authorizing, appropriating and oversight function of Congress. I think when taxpayers take a look, they'll be quite upset at how their dollars are being spent."

When Democrats took power, House and Senate leaders created rules that will identify sponsors of earmarks and require them to certify that they have no financial interest in the earmark.

"It was a missed opportunity to get rid of earmarks altogether," said Beth Daley, head of investigations at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan nonprofit. Daley calls earmarks "the funding stream for the lobbying profession."

The database, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb , lacks some information considered vital by activists. It is only for fiscal 2005 and does not give the name of the lawmaker behind the earmark.

It also does not include any earmarks requested by the administration. As a result, it contains fewer earmarks than some other sources. For example, the Congressional Research Service found $48 billion in earmarks in its review.

Some of those deficiencies will be addressed next year when congressionally authorized earmark disclosure data are released.

"This is a treasure trove of information that [the Office of Management and Budget] has made available to the public," said Steve Ellis, a vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that developed its own earmark database in years past. "We would like to see more, but this is far more than anyone else has had to date."

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nicole.gaouette@latimes.com

tom.hamburger@latimes.com

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Begin text of infobox

Special needs

In fiscal year 2005, there were more than 13,000 earmarks with a total value of $19 billion. Here are the top recipients.

California … $1.66 (in billions)

Pennsylvania … 1.09

Virginia … .94

Texas … .78

Florida … .72

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California projects

About three-fourths of California's $1.6 billion in earmarks are directed to two areas - defense and transportation. Here is a selection of some of the recipients:

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Defense

Allied Container Systems

(Pleasant Hill): $29.7 million for range enhancements at Twentynine Palms Marine base

MC Depots

(Barstow): $21.5 million for repairing battle-damaged vehicles

General Atomics-ASI

(Rancho Bernardo): $30 million to acquire two new Predator UAVs

Defense Language Institute

(Monterey): $6.7 million for a dental clinic

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Transportation

California Department of Transportation: $197,000 for Angels Flight in Los Angeles

L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority: $1.9 million for the MTA bus program

L.A. County MTA: $496,000 for Gold Line subway Foothill extension

Caltrans: $4.2 million for ongoing earthquake retrofit of the Golden Gate Bridge

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Source: Office of Management and Budget

Pork Subterfuge

Earmark Subterfuge

By Robert D. Novak
Monday, March 19, 2007; A15

As part of "Sunshine Week," meant to promote transparent government, the Office of Management and Budget was supposed to release a comprehensive database last Monday revealing the number and cost of earmarks since 2005. It did not. Word on Capitol Hill was that OMB was muzzled by the White House for fear of offending powerful congressional appropriators.

Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee staffs under Democratic control are privately asking individual senators for earmark requests, without much transparency. That would seem to make a sham of the pledge by Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va) to "place a moratorium on all earmarks until a reformed process is put in place."

Thanks partly to the outcome of the 2006 elections, members of Congress can no longer blithely earmark funds for pet projects. But in the dark recesses of Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties are continuing the pernicious practice as best they can. The question is whether they will be curbed by the Republican administration or the Democratic Congress, or by both.

OMB Director Rob Portman, a former member of the House Republican leadership, is a firm opponent of earmarks. On Jan. 25, he signed a memorandum for heads of departments on the collection of information about earmarks. It set forth a rigid timeline to culminate in the posting on March 12 of all these data on the "public Internet." What would be revealed would be a rare exposure of the murky world of congressional pork.

But just as OMB was preparing to put out the information, it sent word to Capitol Hill that -- over the agency's protests -- the data were being kept under wraps by the White House to appease the appropriators. With Congress in the midst of the budget process, President Bush's team did not want to stir up the Hill.

All that was released last Monday was a compilation of 2005 earmarks, with few details. Portman publicly called it "an important first step towards providing greater transparency." In private, however, he said last week: "My hands are tied." Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), scourge of earmarks, told me: "I think the American people should be very disappointed."

An even stronger example of the resiliency of the congressional pork purveyors is the appropriators' noncompliance with the ethics bill that passed the Senate 96 to 2 but awaits final enactment. Coburn delivered a letter to Chairman Byrd, saying: "The committee's failure to make earmark information public would make a mockery of recently passed earmark reforms and would suggest to taxpayers that the Senate wants to continue to earmark funds in secret."

Skimpy though the information is, however, OMB's posting still generated calls of protest to the agency from members of Congress. It is business as usual in the earmarks business orchestrated by the Senate Appropriations subcommittees.

On Feb. 21, the interior, environment and related agencies subcommittee sent senators a detailed procedure for earmarks with a March 30 deadline. On Feb. 28, the chairman and ranking Republican on the energy and water development subcommittee asked for earmark requests that "identify" their "beneficial role." On March 7, the agriculture subcommittee sent senators a request form.

Such request forms generally omit the requirements of the new ethics bill: for example, disclosure of any personal financial interest in an earmark by a member of Congress. The labor, health and human services and education subcommittee's form asks only that the request be made by April 13. Coburn's letter to Byrd: "Your experience and institutional knowledge are invaluable, and I look forward to working with you to ensure that all taxpayers dollars are expended in a fully transparent and responsible manner."

Whether or not Coburn really expects help from Capitol Hill's king of pork, he surely would like to see George W. Bush shrug off the threat of the appropriators and get involved in the war against earmarks. A senior White House aide has advised that the full story, expected last week, will be told by the end of the month. It will be a good test of presidential intent.

Democrats lard bill to bring troops home from Iraq with domestic projects

By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press
2007-03-10 08:20 AM

Democrats seeking votes for their Iraq-withdrawal plan have stuffed the bill it is in with billions of dollars for farms, flu preparedness, New Orleans levees, home heating and other causes.

Some critics say the Democrats are being opportunistic, using a must-pass measure to authorize money for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry items that could not advance as easily on their own.

At the same time, Democratic leaders are trying to increase support for setting deadlines for ending U.S. military combat in Iraq, which they have made part of the larger legislation.

It is clear that Democrats are unwilling to approve the bill's $100 billion (euro76 billion) for Iraq and Afghanistan without devoting considerable sums to the home front.

"The president wants to make sure we take care of Iraq, but I think we also have to make sure that we don't lose sight of what we have to do here at home," said Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel.

Already, money in the bill not directly related to the war exceeds $20 billion (euro15.2 billion).

The funding _ ranging from $3.5 billion (euro2.66 billion) for medical care for veterans and active duty troops to $500 million (euro380.1 million) in "emergency" money for a Western fire season that has yet to start _ has raised hackles with Republicans who say Democrats are using the measure to muscle federal dollars back home.

"Wartime funding should be not used as a gravy train," said conservative Sen. Republican Judd Gregg.

Gregg said the White House would be hard-pressed to veto the bill because of the add-ons. Still, a veto promise hangs over the bill because of its higher-profile provisions that set a deadline for ending the U.S. military role in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey, is not waiting on the coming farm bill to extend income subsidies aimed at small dairy farms. Obey's 13-month extension would cost $283 million (euro215.1 million).

Those items and others, including $2.5 billion (euro1.9 billion) for homeland security projects such as additional cargo screening at ports and airports, $2.9 billion (euro2.2 billion) for levee improvements and other aid for the Gulf Coast, and $735 million (euro558.7 million) to close shortfalls in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, offer virtually every lawmaker a reason to vote for the Iraq funding bill regardless of feelings about the war itself.

Later Friday, the White House sent Congress $3.2 billion (euro2.4 billion) in revisions to its $94.3 billion (euro71.7 billion) request for Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30.

The money would pay for 4,700 additional troops to support President George W. Bush's influx of 21,500 combat troops to stabilize Baghdad and Anbar province, along with additional funds for vehicles with V-shaped bottoms more resistant to roadside bombs. Another $510 million (euro387.7 million) would send an additional 7,200 troops to Afghanistan to prepare for an offensive expected soon by the Taliban and to train Afghan security forces.

To keep costs down, the White House eliminated several much-criticized requests for airplanes, including two next-generation Joint Strike Fighters, that never would have seen action in Iraq. Opponents said the Pentagon was using the war-funding bill to evade budget limits, much like the criticism being leveled at Democrats for adding domestic items.

Spending freeze targets pet projects for members of Congress

Posted on Fri, Dec. 22, 2006

By Matt Stearns and Rob Hotakainen
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Democratic leaders in the new Congress plan to strip funding for thousands of pet projects for individual members, a big display of fiscal discipline they say will help cut deficits and curb spending abuses.

As soon as they take control on Jan. 4, Democrats plan to impose a one-year moratorium on all special projects, known as earmarks, effectively killing those that were tucked into unfinished spending bills by the Republican-led Congress.

Although earmarks are best known for financing big public works projects, the moratorium will come with a distinct human cost.

Like a $250,000 earmark for Best Buddies International in Miami to help provide friendships and employment for the mentally retarded. A $250,000 earmark for a Kansas City domestic violence shelter's effort to expand a school-based anti-violence program. Another $250,000 earmark to expand services to the vision-impaired in Alaska. And $50,000 for the Hungry Lil' Readers Club in Minneapolis.

Overall, the House of Representatives and Senate spending bills for education and social services had about $1 billion in earmarks. Hundreds of millions more lay in other spending bills for similar programs. After-school programs, family literacy programs, health programs: All losing key funding.

As Congress prepares to consider another $100-plus billion emergency appropriation to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some fear that the hardship is falling disproportionately on small groups and organizations.

"If what's happening with these earmarks is that it's all the little things that are getting cut, it's not like we're all in it together," said Lina Belar, a project manager with the History Museum of East Otter Tail County in Perham, Minn. Museum officials received a call from the office of Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., telling them that the museum's $150,000 earmark for a new veterans exhibit, which passed the House, is now on the chopping block.

Many of the earmarks were small compared with the multimillion-dollar earmarks frequently found in bills that pay for defense and transportation.

But local social service agencies typically operate close to the bone.

"This source of funding can be critical to a non-profit," said Gene Morgan, president of the Kansas City Community Center, which stands to lose a $500,000 earmark from Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond to improve safety and security at a halfway house it runs in midtown Kansas City. "I just don't have that kind of cash laying around."

Those who are losing money don't understand why Congress can't differentiate between a good earmark and a bad one.

"This is not a pork barrel," said the Rev. Sam Mann, executive director of Kansas City's United Inner City Services, for which Bond obtained a $750,000 earmark to expand early learning programs for poor urban kids. "This is money going to uplift a neighborhood and children."

Earmarks, sometimes derisively called "pork" projects, are special appropriations that pay for everything from social programs to hospital improvements to road construction to research. While they've long been popular with Democrats and Republicans alike, earmarks became a big issue in the 2006 congressional campaigns because of some widely publicized scandals. Among them were a $452 million earmark for two bridges in Alaska and a bribery scheme that landed former Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham of California in prison after he accepted more than $2 million in bribes after providing special earmarks for defense contractors.

In a joint statement released earlier this month, Sen. Robert Bryd, D-Va., and Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the incoming chairmen of the Senate and House appropriations committees, said that the moratorium will remain in effect "until a reformed process is put in place" and that earmarks included in this year's House and Senate bills will be eligible for consideration in 2008. They said the moratorium is the result of "fiscal mayhem" left over by the Republican Congress.

"Republicans have spent years handing out billions upon billions of dollars in tax cuts to millionaires while shortchanging our national priorities," Obey said. "It is going to take us years to get back on track."

The moratorium has the backing of President Bush, who called it "a good start" toward imposing fiscal discipline on Capitol Hill. In his weekly radio address Dec. 16, Bush said that the number of earmarks has exploded in recent years, going from about 3,000 in 1996 to 13,000 in 2006. He said Congress has created a system where earmarks are often approved with no public debate.

"It is not surprising that this often leads to unnecessary federal spending, such as a swimming pool or a teapot museum tucked into a big spending bill," Bush said.

But some Republicans say earmarks have been a great help to their constituents, and they fear that the new Congress might be going too far.

"The danger now is that Congress could swing from one extreme to the other, leaving important projects without much-needed funding," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.

Obey said there are no perfect solutions, but he noted that Republican leaders adjourned this year without passing a budget and without passing nine of the 11 major appropriations bills needed to keep the government running. As a result, he said, Republicans "forfeited their right to complain about whatever action we are forced to take next year to clean up their chaotic mess."

Organizations affected by the moratorium shouldn't fret, said David Williams, vice president of policy at Citizens Against Government Waste. But he said projects no longer will be able to quietly slip through a back channel with no hearing.

"They're going to have to go through the checks and balances and the competitive bidding process," he said. "It's a lot more difficult to go through the proper process, but really it is a lot fairer."


McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Brady Averill contributed to this report.

Junior Draws a Line in the Ear

Dec 18. 2006

On the pathetic self-stroking in Junior's Saturday Morning Reading Class, trying to generate some enthusiasm over an anemic economy.

To me, the mind-bending disconnect in Junior's address was his courageous stand against earmarks in legislation. Duck under the fold and let's listen to the Decider for a sec:

. . .over the last decade, the Congressional Research Service reports that the number of earmarks has exploded -- increasing from about 3,000 in 1996 to 13,000 in 2006.

Nice work there. Somebody actually got him to successfully pronouce a four-syllable word and accurately relay a set of two numbers. But the dates that bracket those numbers hide a glaring fact, one that can be easily deduced by looking at the CRS report: Earmarks have exploded since the Bush administration took office. With both houses of Congress under GOP control and a president who cannot bring himself to veto a single bill, earmarks have gone stratospheric since 2000.

Two examples from the CRS report:

Agriculture Appropriations
Summary of Estimated Earmarks
(millions of current dollars)
FY Earmarks
1994 313
1996 211
2000 359
2005 704

Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies
Appropriations
Summary of Estimated Earmarks
(millions of current dollars)

FY Earmarks
1994 253
1996 171
2000 361
2005 1,772

Those two examples serve to illustrate that, under the Clinton administration, with a Congress under pressure to do something about deficits, earmarks were largely checked, and even reduced. They began to creep back up as the deficit eased, but nothing like the syrup-in-the-petri-dish growth we've seen under "conservative" GOP government.

Okay, back to Remedial Reading Class:

I respect Congress's authority over the public purse, but the time has come to reform the earmark process and dramatically reduce the number of earmarks.

Reforming earmarks is the responsibility of both political parties. Over the past year, the Republican Congress succeeded in eliminating virtually all earmarks for three major Cabinet departments. And I'm pleased that Democratic leaders in Congress recently committed themselves to support reforms that would restore transparency and accountability to earmarks. For this year's budget, they pledged to maintain current levels of spending and not include any earmarks. And they agreed to a temporary moratorium on earmarks.

You see, it's really Republicans who've led the way on reducing earmarks. Three whole Cabinet-level departments. As the three departments aren't specified, we can assume they do not include Transportation, where bridges to nowhere continue to roll on, or Homeland Security, or Ag, or. . .

Junior does give a hat tip to Democrats who, in contrast to the Republicans' "success," have "pledged" to support spending reforms. Nice touch that, but bi-partisan bonhomie soon evaporates with a stamp of the Decider's foot:

This is a good start, but Congress needs to do much more. My administration will soon lay out a series of reforms that will help make earmarks more transparent, that will hold the members who propose earmarks more accountable, and that will help reduce the number of earmarks inserted into large spending bills.

Ah, you see? Even my loyal Republican minions can only do so much. And can we really trust Democratic "pledges?" No, it will take the firm hand of restraint that only my administration can provide.

After all, look at all the frivolous spending I've already vetoed. Look at all the naked profiteering I've stopped in Defense and Homeland Security. Why, just look at all the pork I've cut from Agriculture.

Yeah, well. . .

The idea that the administration of George Junior Bush will somehow provide the guidance neccessary to curtail congressional excess, in the interest of reducing federal spending and curbing the deficit is, flatly, absurd.

Unless of course the Decider is simply drawing a line in the sand against the Democrats. We will hold the line against earmarks, now that we've lost the majority and aren't in the position to simply toss 'em into legislation in all-Republican conference meetings.

I am, in this as in so many virtuous pronouncements of our Decider, reminded of Claude Rains in "Casablanca," so "shocked, shocked" to discover there's been gambling going on in the place, as he pockets his winnings.

--Lou@LouLost.com