Earmarks Don't Matter, Contributions Do

Money Grab by Steve WamplerThe New York Times reveals that, surprise, surprise, private for-profit companies have found ways to circumvent earmark restrictions.  It turns out, setting up a nonprofit controlled by a for-profit company isn't terribly difficult.  For all the sturm und drang generated by stories of squirrel bridges to nowhere, earmarks don't really matter all that much.  Four hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money, unless you are talking about it in the context of a national debt of trillions.  That said, the earmark discussion did point out an area of real concern:

 Now, the center — which intends to sell the Pentagon small hollow metal spheres for body armor that the Defense Department has so far declined to buy in large quantities and may never use — has $10.4 million in new earmark requests from Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio.

The congresswoman, who has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Ms. Kurtz’s family and her business’s lobbyists, thought the quickly hatched nonprofit organization was a convenient solution.

Ms. Kaptur seems unduly excited that a company figured out a method to receive money from the government for a product that did not pass muster on the open market.  Another:

The Virtual Reality Medical Center, a California-based company that sells visual simulation headgear as an experimental form of medical therapy, had sought nearly $6 million in earmarks before the ban. Soon after, company officials instead proposed that the money go to the Interactive Media Institute, a nonprofit group controlled by the center’s top executives, which had been set up to sponsor educational conferences.

An aide to Representative Corrine Brown, the Florida Democrat who submitted the request, acknowledged consulting with Virtual Reality executives and then jointly deciding to redirect the earmark. “The rules were that nonprofits can apply, so a nonprofit did,” said Lee Footer, a senior legislative assistant.

So Brown actually cowrote the legislation with with the company affected by it.  Imagine a judge "consulting" with the plaintiff on the verdict.  Still more:

In Pennsylvania, General Electric is likely to get as much as 80 percent of a $2 million earmark proposed by Pennsylvania State University for research on clean-burning GE locomotives. At the suggestion of the company and the university’s lobbyist, according to a Penn State professor, the university is listed as the lead player in the collaboration instead of GE, as was done previously. GE executives made a series of political contributions to Representative Kathy Dahlkemper, Democrat of Pennsylvania, days after she submitted the earmark request.

Dahlkemper reverses the order of usual political hackery by not just taking any money proffered and making good whenever the Godfather asks for a favor in return.  Instead, she performed a service for a fee; giving away the government's money in exchange for promised campaign contributions.

A General Atomics spokesman, Jim Elliott, declined to comment on the project, which is also supported through competitively awarded grants. “I don’t want to talk about how we get money,” he said. “There are a lot of competitors out there.”

Federal records show that the company has made a series of contributions to the sponsors of the requests, including Representatives Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Solomon P. Ortiz and Ciro D. Rodriguez of Texas, all Democrats.

Without excusing the fact that the Democrats have much looser earmark rules than Republicans, who vowed to forswear earmarks entirely, this is hardly a partisan problem.  Republicans do not need to dole out sugar in order to earn campaign kickbacks.  Indeed, they don't have to vote for anything as proven by the plummeting financial sector fundraising for Democrats after they passed financial reform. 

It is a complicated issue to reform, however, because money is legally considered constitutionally protected speech; so we and, thanks to Citizens United, corporations have the right to spend in support of politicians we want to see elected.  It is hard to see what's wrong with people concerned about global warming or national defense raising money to back candidates who care about those issues.  But which direction does the causation run in a political system where politicians are expected to raise funds constantly and campaigns become mall Christmas decorations: beginning anew as soon as they end?  Do politicians garner the money of the ideologically like-minded or do they gravitate to the moneyed ideologies?

Further attempts at passing campaign finance reform will likely only result in further opaque complexity in a system that could use clarity and sunshine.  Instead I propose a little old fashioned shame.  We need to confront politicians who treat the excercise of power as the engine of campaign fundraising with the scorn they deserve.  Representatives Kaptur, Brown, Dahlkemper, Chandler, Ortiz and Rodriguez, you should be ashamed that you put bringing home bacon above the propriety of politics.  People like you make all exercise of government authority less legitimate.  I can only hope that your time in politics is short and ignoble.  Political candidacy should not be an IPO where any interest getting in on the groundfloor reaps a windfall from the public coffers.  We need to expect more of our leaders, and they need to offer more to us and less to them.

Comments

[Christopher Carr]

Ron Paul's had some interesting things to say on earmarks, specifically when challenged once and shouted down err...umm... Fox News-style by shrill Neil Cavuto. Of course it's on YouTube under the title "Ron Paul Slams Cavuto on Earmarks": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqPhrqllHzY and is accompanied by Rand 2010 adverts.