A $30-million Obama earmark for the CTA
President Barack Obama, who has assured us that he’s the St. George in the crusade to slay the evil dragon Earmark, slipped a $30 million boon into the federal budget for the CTA’s Brown Line.
Which I guess proves that all earmarks are bad…unless they are our earmarks.
Obama, while he was still our junior senator connived with Illinois’ senior senator, Dick Durbin, to insert the $30 million give-away into the fiscal year 2009 omnibus budget just passed by House. Taxpayers for Common Sense, in its search for earmarks in the massive budget bill, discovered the $30 million lurking in federal transportation expenditures. The $410-billion budget is being debated in the Senate this week, without any sign that Obama or Durbin are objecting to the inclusion.
That pretty much shreds Obama’s promise that he would go “line-by-line” through the budget to liquidate such special interest legislation spending. Of course, that’s not nearly the only earmark in the budget bill.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan watchdog group, found 8,575 earmarks, worth $7.7 billion in the omnibus spending bill, which covers eight categories of spending for fiscal year 2009 ending this fall. Normally, the budget is supposed to be passed before the fiscal year begins (which this year should have been Oct. 1, 2008), but the Democratic-controlled Congress failed to complete the process because—why else?—if they waited until after Obama took office, jamming every conceivable, harebrained project into the bill would be a lot easier.
Despite promises of reducing earmarks, this year’s earmarks in the eight categories of spending actually exceed by $300 million the earmarks in the fiscal 2008 spending categories. If you include the spending that was approved last fall (e.g. defense), earmarks in the 2009 budget total $14.3 billion. And those are only the “disclosed” earmarks, meaning the ones that lawmakers openly declared themselves to have sponsored. Digging out undisclosed earmarks will take a lot more digging, and because picking out earmarks is like trying to pick up a tomato seed, results may vary.
For example, McClatchy Newspapers, found former Chicago congressman and now White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel shoved 16 earmarks, worth about $8.5 million into the omnibus bill. Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the total was closer to $9 million. But when you add in what he co-sponsored, the total was $20.9 million.
Durbin, of course, excels. Everything from improvements at DeKalb’s airport ($1.2 million) and the CTA Red Line ($950,000) to Downstate buses ($4.75 million) and the “Illinois Pedestrian and Bicycling Road and Trail Improvements and Enhancements” ($2.85 million). Along with others, he is lagging $5.8 million to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate in Boston. Among other notable earmarkers was former Illinois congressman and now Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood, who scored $95,000 for the Peoria Riverfront Museum.
The president, naturally, has done his part, turning up in all kinds of unexpected places: $2.4 million for the Southeastern Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Ga., and $163 million for a federal facility in Montgomery County, Maryland. Among many others.
Despite Obama’s anti-earmark rhetoric, his stimulus package is chock-a-block loaded with them. Most egregious is $1 billion for the controversial “FutureGen” zero-emission energy plant in Mattoon, one of Illinois lawmakers’ most coveted pork projects. Just how pervasive these earmarks have become is probably best demonstrated by the squealing of the (few) special interests that were left out. We’ve heard whining from zoos, the “arts community” and Hollywood, among others.
Remember, as troubling as the earmarks contained in the 2009 omnibus bill and the stimulus package are, serious discovery of all the earmarks in Obama’s proposed and ever more generous 2010 budget hasn’t really begun yet.
I suppose you could argue the merits of each earmark, such as improvements made to mass transit. Any discussion of “only” a few billion dollars of earmarks may even be passé when Washington has moved on to routinely spending trillions. But eliminating (or at least better controlling) earmarks is critical. They corrupt the system by bypassing the rigors of public exposure and congressional due process. They are the direct response to special interests and invite overspending. They are more than a symbol of what is wrong with Washington. They are what is wrong with Washington.
Obama has pledged to “ban all earmarks” which he called “the process by which individual members insert pet projects [into the budget] without review.” Former President George W. Bush signed an executive order (No. 13457) imposing strict prohibitions on earmarks, but Obama has not yet clearly enunciated his support for continuing the order.
Maybe he will, but considering his own actions on earmarks, any pledge he speaks has to be taken lightly. In fact, any promise he makes has to be doubted.
In my view, placing earmarks in the federal budget needs to be made illegal. Permitting earmarks to be inserted in the budget, and in any spending bill, appears to be just one more means by which our representatives in Washington bypass the constitutionally-intended process by which laws are to be established (after being subjected to full debate and discussion), and by which these representatives betray the faith and trust placed in them when they were elected. I would like to see a complete listing of the earmarks in the budget bill, in a single list, accompanied by the name of the Congress person who sponsored or cosponsored each earmark. This list should then be released to the MSM, and we should keep track of which media outlets actually publish the complete list.
I, for one, would be willing to help ferret out the earmarks, but the task for an individual, is overwhelming. How can I help?
James P. Smith
Dayton, OH
Mr. Smith, there is such a list. It is available from Taxpayers for Common Sense at: http://www.taxpayer.net/. Scroll through the material there, and you\’ll find the information you\’re seeking. It is where I found some of the information that I used in my column. That same list is available to the mainstream media but, for some reason that I can\’t imagine, they don\’t seem interested in reporting it.
Hey Dennis,
Given the complete irresponsibility of the incumbent media, I think we have become the defacto mainstream.
JBP
It astonishes me that tonight\\\’s news shows talk about earmarks here and earmarks there, and are either completely ignorant of Obama\\\’s or choose to completely ignore them. At one time, this would be considered to have been big news. No longer. When I started out at the Chicago Daily News more than 40 years ago, this used to be a profession. No more.
hypocracy aside, I think too much is made of earmarks as an issue. someof them are worthwhile projects, as many of those in Illinois you mention seem to be, and they are a real drop in the bucket of federal spending. To make earmarks illegal is truly to cut our noses of to spite our faces, particularly here in Illinois, where government is both totally disfunctional and on the verge of bankruptcy.
It is far more productive to focus on unnecessary federal programs which are far more expensive and seem to develop lives of their own after time.
only prosperity will give us a fighting chance to balance the federal budget- lets not pretend abolishing earmarks merely ecause they ar earmakrs is going to help us turn the cor4ner on budget deficits. and let us recognize that politicians who real against earmarks as if it sets them apart as responsible public servants are just playing us for fools.
LGR,
Let me see if I have this straight. A politician campaigns against earmarks, then when elected, uses the public purse to reward his constituents and contributors. There is no review as to the merits of the programs, just political choices.
How about we eliminate that sort of spending first…then go after spending that already has a review process? And when a politician (Obama in this case) directly contradicts himself, how about holding him accountable for his misdirection?
JBP
the low intelligence of internet boards, conservatives and republicans in general is scary. you guys are reduced to slogans, mottos, and bumper stickers, with no knowledge of our political system or how government works.
In case you failed civics in high school, let me educate you all. We elect our congressmen and women to represent our local interests. Our local interests can be schools, transportation, and other things that require funding. Funding means money. Our officials have been sent by us to bring back funding to our communities. This money comes from a thing we all pay, it is called tax.
So, we elect our officials to bring back our tax money. I am fine with my senators bringing back millions to my state for transit or construction projects.
If you would like to continue paying taxes and not getting anything in return, please continue to do so; that way my blue state can become better and your broke red state can become even more of a backwater.
cheers from Illinois.
Moe seems to have no idea of how money works… Obama is a liar, and no one will ever say that… that is the point of this.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.
What one person receives without working for, another
person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end
of any nation.
- Abraham Lincoln
$22.39
That’s the earmark cost per-capita averaged out across the US.
State with the highest costs per-capita? ALASKA ($209.71)
State with the lowest costs per-capita? ARIZONA ($8.41)
Illinois earmark costs rank? 4TH LOWEST.
Illinois cost per capita? $10.93
After doing my own research, I agree with those that say that earmarks are a drop in the bucket compared to the real issue. Sure, Obama promised to ‘surgically address’ earmark spending, and sure, he let over 9,000 earmarks pass. BUT based on fiscal budget planning, these earmarks are literally a fraction of a percent of the overall budget, and media stories like these woo people with drama and lead them to chase partisan rabbit-holes while we fail to address real problems.
Can we as a nation consider that Obama means when he says that based on our current economic conditions, sure earmark reform is important but as of this week, this month, we need to get the larger economy stabilized.
ALL THIS DATA WAS SOURCED BY TAXPAYER.NET on 3/11/09.
Josh,
If Pres. Obama will throw earmark reform under the bus, what else do you think he has in store for taxpayers in the US? After all, he promised to do something about it, but in his spending bills that have come through in the last 50 days, there are all kinds of pork and earmakrs.
What conditions would have to be met before Pres. Obama started living up to his campaign promises?
JBP
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