Citizens Against Government Waste's 2018 Congressional Pig Book exposes 232 earmarks in fiscal year 2018, 42 percent more than FY 2017. The cost of earmarks exploded to $14.7 billion, a 116 percent increase from last year and nearly nine times more than the increase in discretionary spending from FY 2017 to 2018. The only other time the cost of earmarks has at least doubled was FY 1992 to 1993. Since FY 1991, our group has identified 110,861 earmarks costing $344.5 billion.
The $14.7 billion in earmarks is more than half of the record $29 billion in FY 2006. At the rate of increase over FY 2017, Congress could set a new record for pork-barrel spending by the end of President Trump's first term.
Earmarks for salmon, snakes and opera
The explosion in earmarks is accompanied by record expenditures for a significant number of programs and projects. The $593 million earmark for the continued upgrade of the M1 Abrams tank is an increase of 1,383 percent over the $40 million earmarked in FY 2016, and the largest earmark ever for this program. There is a near-record $13 million for Save America's Treasures grants, which funds local opera houses, museums, and theaters. Other absurd earmarks included $65 million for Pacific coastal salmon recovery and $663,000 brown tree snake eradication.
Perhaps the most egregious earmark is the $16.7 million for the East-West Center, added by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii (no relation to the author). It constituted the entire appropriation for the organization after the president's budget and the House both zeroed it out. The center was created in 1960 over the objections of the State Department. It should be able to stand on its own without taxpayer support 58 years later.
The need for a permanent ban in earmarks is now greater than ever, since the earmark moratorium is turning out to be a sham. The bipartisan call for a restoration of earmarks must be met with the same contempt and disdain that helped lead to the moratorium in 2011.
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It is important to remember why the moratorium was deemed necessary. The movement gained traction due to the tireless work of members of Congress such as Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake; high-profile boondoggles such as the Bridge to Nowhere; and a decade of scandals that resulted in jail terms for lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Republican Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California and Bob Ney of Ohio. "There's nothing swampier than earmarks," Flake said.
As McCain explained regarding those making the case for a return to earmarks, "The problem with all their arguments is: the more powerful you are, the more likely it is you get the earmark in. Therefore, it is a corrupt system."
In the 111th Congress, when the names of members of Congress who obtained earmarks were included in the appropriations bills, the 81 House and Senate appropriators — 15 percent of Congress — had 51 percent of the earmarks and 61 percent of the money. Restoring earmarks would reinstate this grossly inequitable system.
Earmark proponents claim that these expenditures are a key part of the Article I tax and spending power given to Congress. But as Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, co-leaders of the Article I Project, wrote last year of earmarks: "Congress needs to assert its power of the purse, but not in this manner." They said earmarking was used by lobbyists and leadership to force "members to vote for bills that their constituents — and sometimes their conscience — opposed." A restoration of earmarks "would make our job harder, make Congress weaker and make federal power more centralized, less accountable and more corrupt."
These sentiments echo President James Monroe's May 4, 1822 Special Message to Congress regarding its authority to spend money on internal improvements in the United States: "It is, however, my opinion that the power should be confined to great national works only, since if it were unlimited it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil."
The 2018 Congressional Pig Book exposes the gaping chasm between Republican promises of fiscal responsibility and the sad reality that they govern like the swamp creatures they so often decry. The only way for Republicans to reverse this blatant hypocrisy is to immediately enact a permanent earmark ban.
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Tom Schatz (@TomSchatzCAGW) is the president of Citizens Against Government Waste - a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
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