Cities are bracing to lose millions of dollars in funding for transportation and community projects, from subway lines to youth centers, because of a renewed push in Congress to ban lawmaker-directed spending known as “earmarks.”
With the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives committed to ending the practice and the Senate facing a vote to ban earmarks today, local officials are scrambling to find ways to pay for projects in case the federal funding never arrives.
Spending bills in the House for the 2011 fiscal year include more than 3,000 earmarks worth $3 billion, according to the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense ”” from $2.5 million for a transportation center in Rochester, N.Y., to $250,000 for park upgrades in Gonzales, La.
It is actually quite simple–if you can’t pay for it, don’t buy it. If you need it, then take money from something you don’t need or can live without to pay for it. Why is this so simple in our familiy finances, but governments just don’t seem to get it?
I’ve always looked at earmarks as redistribution of wealth from one state’s taxpayers to another. And, while I realize, in the grand scheme of the enormous Federal budget, earmarks are relatively minor, there is still a principal that more efficient spending of this money would be better left at home with the taxpayers, than having to go through the well-known inefficient Federal government bureaucracy. Furthermore, earmarks promote the seniority sytem in Congress, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. The more powerful members, who have been there the longest, hold more sway for getting votes for their earmarks than new members. While us Southerners have profited from that system for centuries, it does promote and allow folks like Mr. Rangel to become so entrenched that they lose sight of why they are there and begin to personally profit from such earmarks. Finally, earmarks are extremely inefficient ways to get legislation passed. When an earmark is attached to a bill on a national issue that has nothing to do with the earmark, the earmark may hold up the passage of the bill or may lose out when the bill is not passed for other reasons. And, the earmarks are always hidden within those bills, so the citizenry doesn’t even know it has been passed, much less most of Congress who votes on the bill. (Look at the healthcare bill, if you have doubts.)