Ron Paul: Earmarks Rule. F You.
Ha. Ron Paul = awesome.
Paraphrase: “I voted against every appropriation bill ever put in front of me, so you can’t say I’ve ever voted for an earmark. But the point is, I’d rather we had more earmarks rather than things like TARP, where you have no idea where it’s going. And besides, if I can give my district any of its money back, I will; that’s the same reason I vote for every tax cut put in front of me, no matter how ridiculous.”
Sort of convoluted, and clearly he’s trying to have it both ways, but pretty funny anyway.
On this issue, Dr. Paul’s stance appears at first glance to be hypocritical.
But then, when you really think about it, and you examine all the arguments…you come to the conclusion that your first instinct was entirely justified.
Yay Fox News! Boo Ron Paul!
Comment by Rojas — 3/11/2009 @ 2:10 pm
Yeah.
I think the critical bad assumption here is that if he wouldn’t put in those spending allocations, that money would be spent anyway.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 2:42 pm
Actually, maybe I’ve misunderstood.
Are earmarks additional spending, or allocations of spending?
You’d think I’d know something like that, but now I’m not sure.
If earmarks are just taking part of the appropriations and marking them for something specific, then hell, Ron’s got a damn good point. If it’s between an individual Congressman representing their district and some executive branch bureaucrat allocating the money, I can find a pretty good argument for letting the congressmen do it.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 3:55 pm
They’re additional spending by definition. That’s why eliminating them would save (a small amount of) money.
Comment by Rojas — 3/11/2009 @ 4:23 pm
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Okay, whew. I was pretty aghast when I heard Doug, Lew Rockwell, and Ron all saying it was just an allocation, and not additional spending, as I thought maybe I had just been wrong about that rather critical underlying assumption all these years.
So yeah, they’re just flat out wrong (or in Ron’s case, being disingenuous). I was right the first time. See Post #2.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 4:33 pm
Rojas,
Where’s your source for saying that earmarks are “additional spending by definition” ?
The traditional definition of an earmark is that a Congressman (or Senator, but usually a Congressman) designates that a portion of, say, the budget for the Dept. Of Transportation (an amount typically set by the Executive Dept. in the annual budget it submits to Congress) will go to, say, improvements to the Elmer Fudd Memorial Highway, in Podunk, Louisiana.
The money will be spent either way. Earmarking is just about who decides where the money goes.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — 3/11/2009 @ 4:37 pm
Rojas (and Brad),
Isn’t also worth noting that, in the long run, earmarks account for an incredibly small percentage of the Federal Budget ?
2% of the Omnibus Bill that Obama signed today, 1% of the total Federal Budget.
Whether Ron Paul is right or not, the one thing that is clear is that even if earmarking was eliminated it would have no impact at all on the size, scope, or power of the Federal Government.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — 3/11/2009 @ 4:39 pm
Hey man, I’m with you there, and have shouted that to the high heavens at every opportunity.
But my understanding has always been that the final amount of an appropriations bill does indeed change during the congressional process, and that when congressmen add earmarks, what they’re doing is piling on additional spending. As in, the original bill: “the Dept. of Transportation needs 50 billion dollars this year”, and congressmen: “+150 million for the Elmer Fudd Bridge”.
If it’s a set amount pool of money and they’re just specifically allocating some of that pool, but the total amount of the pool never changes, than I sure have been wrong about that (and it makes my “earmarks don’t matter” pretty much a moot point; I could retitle it “OF COURSE earmarks don’t matter”).
I think that earmarks can work both ways, but usually (almost always?) work as additional spending.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 4:44 pm
Brad,
Knowing what I know about the way Congress works, it’s likely a combination of both.
In the end, I just can’t bring myself to really give a crap about a few billion dollars worth of earmarks when the Feds are wasting money on a trillion dollar basis.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — 3/11/2009 @ 4:48 pm
Nor can I, but that’s a point worth clearing up. As I said above, I do think they can work both ways, but by and large I think Ron is taking more money out of taxpayer pockets with his “strategy”.
However, where it matters to me is, if all earmarks work the way Ron Paul is clearly implying they do, I’m not only ambivalent about them, I’m all for them!
If they work how I’m pretty sure they work in almost all cases, than yeah…just ambivalent, with a tinge of annoyance at Paul being cravenly disingenuous there.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 4:52 pm
I’d always thought in terms of the OMB’s definition, but it appears that it isn’t universally accepted:
So it’s possible that what John McCain and I mean by an “earmark” is not what Ron Paul and Doug M. mean. Mea culpa on my absolutist assertion in comment #4. Paul’s argument, however, only applies if every earmark he’s sending home is a reappropriation of allocated funds, which seems extremely unlikely.
And, of course, the argument that earmarks are only a small portion of the budget does Paul no service whatsoever.
Comment by Rojas — 3/11/2009 @ 5:15 pm
Yeah, that’s what I’ve always taken to be considered “earmarks”.
Brad’s final stance:
Allocating funds already in the budget to a specific program rather than an undirected account: Go for it, congressmen.
Adding new funding requests on top of the requested budgetary funds: Booo (but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it).
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 5:19 pm
That does make me wonder both how many of Ron Paul’s earmarks are the OMB examples, and how many of John McCain’s earmark-talking-points are not.
It also makes me wonder about the numbers commonly thrown around about earmarks. .08% of the total budget (or whatever) is peanuts. If about half of that is money that’s already going to be spent anyway, it looks even more irrelevant.
Which, of course, makes no nevermind about the culpability for specific congressmen in adding new spending, I should hasten to not left unsaid.
Although I guess that too is sort of moot for Paul, given that he votes against all budgets anyway.
Man, he’s a slippery one.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 5:21 pm
Doug’s final stance:
Let’s stop talking about penny’s and start talking about dollars.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — 3/11/2009 @ 5:23 pm
I see no reason not to discuss both.
When one is taking on a culture of budgetary entitlement, you want to go after the examples of clearly unjustifiable spending alongside the examples of arguably justifiable spending of huge magnitude.
But this is an old, old argument where TCP’s concerned. The point to be made in this particular thread is that Ron Paul is an assclown and Fox News pwns totally. Surely we can all concur on that point, at least.
Comment by Rojas — 3/11/2009 @ 5:33 pm
Anybody have the research cojones to try and find out if Paul’s annual earmarks are, in fact, the re-allocation kind?
I have learned from poking around that the name “earmark” does indeed come from the re-allocation sense of it—a budget is presented, and congressmen “earmark” portions of it for their own purposes, i.e. a divvying up, not a piling on. Clearly, that’s not really the commonly understood meaning of the term today, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Paul really does just do all his earmarks that way. Congressmen tend to do things all one way, so it could be that when he has his staff prep his additions to budget bills, they’ve just always done them that way (i.e. the traditionalist way, which wouldn’t be out of character for how his office works). So, he’s either being avuncularly naive in just assuming that’s what everyone means when they say earmarks (because that’s how he’s always done it), or he’s being disingenuous.
Anyone want to find out for sure?
Dammit man, we need interns.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 5:42 pm
Welcome to “Nobody is Precisely Sure What They’re Talking About” day here at The Pond.
Also known as: Wednesday.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 5:45 pm
I know precisely what I’m talking about. At least when I am saying that I just don’t know what the hell is going on.
Comment by Mortexai — 3/11/2009 @ 6:06 pm
Rojas,
If the people in Washington were talking about the really big money as much as they talk about earmarks, I might agree with you.
As it is, I’m pretty suspicious about the whole crusade and somewhat convinced that all this talk about earmarks is meant to divert attention from the real burglary going on over there in Disneyland on the Potomac.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — 3/11/2009 @ 6:06 pm
That’s why you can’t be a blogger.
Comment by Brad — 3/11/2009 @ 6:06 pm
Hey, I have a blog.
Several.
That I generally never update.
Shut up.
Comment by Mortexai — 3/11/2009 @ 6:17 pm
I’d always thought (and by always, I mean since last year when I first heard the term) that earmarks were reallocations. Here’s what I get from the Salt Lake Tribune:
“The fact is if you take all of the earmarks out, you don’t change” the overall cost of the bill, Bennett said.
Here’s how the appropriations process works: subcommittees are given an overall amount to spend on government projects. Members normally earmark some of that funding for needs in their home states. If those earmarks were eliminated, the cost of the bill would not drop. Instead, the money would go to the federal department to determine how to spend it.
“The difference is who is going to be the decision maker,” Bennett said. “Is it going to be Congress, the way the Constitution says it ought to be or will it be the bureaucrats?”
and this is what I get from Brookings:
Earmarks constitute less than 1 percent of the federal budget. In most cases, they don’t add to federal expenditures but merely allow Congress to direct a small fraction of program funding that would otherwise be allocated by formula or grant competition.
Comment by Redland Jack — 3/12/2009 @ 4:08 am
Even if it’s only 0.8% or 1% or whatever, I think it is kind of lame to argue that it isn’t worth fighting over. It’s still a lot of money, there’s principle at stake (yeah, I know), and most economists seem to care q uite a bit about 1% here and there.
Comment by Jerrod — 3/12/2009 @ 10:19 pm
I’m not sure I agree that earmarks which use pre-allocated funds are harmless. If the DOT needs $50B (and I’m not sure how they come up with that number), then it doesn’t seem at all harmless to me if Ron Paul makes sure that $100M of that goes to the Elmer Fudd Bridge, if that $100M could also be used for, say incentives for improvements in fuel economy or battery technology research grants.
Earmarks, even of this kind, allocate money toward items which may be chosen for political purposes rather than for the most effective or beneficial use of the money.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how one would determine the “most beneficial and effective use of the money”.
Comment by Talarohk — 3/12/2009 @ 11:59 pm
I suppose it’s all fine and dandy to protest earmarks on principle, but, and from reading this discussion here it seems a HUGE but, if eliminating the earmarks doesn’t reduce the actual spending, and even if it did reduce it by the whole 1%, it seems a bit of ‘polishing the brass on the titanic’ sort of thing.
Comment by Mortexai — 3/13/2009 @ 1:20 am
Daniel Larrison gets it right, I think:
And that’s not just because people love handouts; it’s because what looks like pork to a D.C. insider may look pretty good to someone living next to it, and it may well serve some real need that doesn’t make a lot of sense in Washington but makes a heckuva lot of sense to people in that district. As an example, McCain cited “$650,000 for beaver management” as his earmark du jour for one week a few months ago. Turns out, that’s a pretty important expenditure in some parts of the country.
Comment by Brad — 3/13/2009 @ 4:50 pm
Ask the folks down in Tierra del Fuego if they think beaver management is funny.
Comment by Mortexai — 3/13/2009 @ 9:35 pm