We Should Care This Much About Earmarks? Really?

Lee Drutman
Miller-McCune

Earmarks are not a big deal, say political scientists. Most are perfectly justifiable, and they definitely aren’t to blame for the “eruption of spending” from Washington.

Republicans returning to Washington, D.C. after winning re-election based in part on promises to get tough on the U.S. government’s massive budget deficit have started attacking the process of setting aside earmarks. This story originally ran on March 17, 2009.

If you’ve been following some of the recent coverage of the $410 billion federal appropriations bill, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is little more to the federal budget than a plague of roughly 9,000 “earmarks,” all wasteful and deceitful. After all, both the mainstream press and congressional Republicans have been relentlessly focused on earmarks — and not generally in the kindest of terms.

But how concerned should the public really be about earmarks? Actually, not very, say political scientists who study earmarks and pork-barrel politics.

For one, earmarks (i.e. specific targeted requests for funding separate from the normal appropriations process) account for roughly 2 percent of all appropriations expenditures. (By contrast, the military budget accounts for more than half of all federal discretionary spending).

And while some projects might sound silly when taken out of context, most actually serve legitimate local needs that otherwise fall through the cracks of normal funding mechanisms (which, by the way, would disburse the same amount of money even without earmarks)

(More here.)