Earmark (politics)
An earmark is a provision inserted into a discretionary spending appropriations bill that directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or competitive funds allocation process. Earmarks feature in American and South African public finance.
"Earmark" comes from the livestock term, where the ears of domestic animals were cut in specific ways so that farmers could distinguish their stock from others grazing on public land. In particular, the term comes from earmarked hogs where, by analogy, pork-barreled legislation would be doled out among members of the local political machine.
United States
In the United States, the term earmark is used in relation with the congressional allocation process.Discretionary spending, which is set by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and their various subcommittees, usually through appropriation acts, is an optional part of fiscal policy which differs from mandatory spending for entitlement programs in the federal budget.
Definitions
In 2006 the Congressional Research Service compiled a report on the use of earmarks in thirteen Appropriation Acts from 1994 through 2005 in which they noted that there was "not a single definition of the term earmark accepted by all practitioners and observers of the appropriations process, nor there a standard earmark practice across all appropriation bills." It was noted at that time, that while the CRS did not summarize earmarks that they came in two varieties: hard earmarks, or "hardmarks", found in legislation, and soft earmarks, or "softmarks", found in the text of congressional committee reports. Hard earmarks are legally binding, whereas soft earmarks are not but are customarily acted upon as if they were. The CRS did not aggregate the "varying definitions" as the result would be invalid.By 2006, the definition most widely used, developed by the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress was,
According to the federal Office of Management and Budget the term earmark referred to,
In 2015, for the purpose of clause 9 of rule XXI restricting certain bills in the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 114th Congress, Congressional earmarks were defined as, The House Rules impose disclosure requirements for earmarks, while a standing rule of the Republican Conference has, since the 114th Congress, imposed an "earmark moratorium".
Typically, a legislator seeks to insert earmarks that direct a specified amount of money to a particular organization or project in their home state or district.
Appropriation committees
The two most powerful Congressional committees, the Senate Committee on Appropriations and the House Committee on Appropriations, pass bills that regulate expenditures the United States federal government.Chairs and Members of these committees are seen as influential. The Senate Appropriations Committee is the largest committee in the U.S. Senate, with 30 members in the 114th Congress and is, therefore one of the most powerful committees in the Senate. In 2006 the two committees controlled $843 billion a year in discretionary spending in 2006 and earmarked tens of billions of dollars that year.
President Obama proposed freezing discretionary spending representing approximately 12% of the budget in his 2011 State of the Union address.
Value
Based on the 2006 CRS report the comparative total value of earmarks from 1994 to 2005 was,| year | CAGW | CRS |
| 1994 | $7.8 | $23.2 |
| 1996 | $12.5 | $19.5 |
| 1998 | $13.2 | $27.7 |
| 2000 | $17.7 | $32.9 |
| 2002 | $20.1 | $42.0 |
| 2004 | $22.9 | $45.0 |
| 2005 | $27.3 | $47.4 |
Earmarks as a % of total federal outlay.
| year | CAGW | CRS |
| 1994 | 0.004% | 1.59% |
| 1996 | 0.80% | 1.25% |
| 1998 | 0.80% | 1.67% |
| 2000 | 0.99% | 1.84% |
| 2002 | 1.00% | 2.09% |
| 2004 | 1.00% | 1.96% |
| 2005 | 1.10% | 1.92% |
Legislation
The Congress is required by Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution to pass legislation prior to the expenditure of any U.S. Treasury funds.The earmarking process provided Congress with the power to earmark discretionary funds it appropriates to be spent on specific named projects. The earmarking process was a regular part of the process of allocating funds within the Federal government. For many years they were a core aspect of legislative policymaking and distributive politics - an essential political instrument whereby political coalitions were forged through compromise in order to pass or reject key legislation. As congressional earmarks came into disfavor and eventually were prohibited, the ban "contributed to legislative gridlock and increased the difficulty of winning enactment of tax and immigration reform."
Earmarking differs from the broader appropriations process in which Congress grants a yearly lump sum of money to a federal agency. These monies are allocated by the agency according to its legal authority, the terms of the annual authorization bill passed by Congress and internal budgeting process. With an earmark, Congress directs a specified amount of money from part of an agency's authorized budget to be spent on a particular project. In the past members of Congress did not have to identify themselves or the project.
The process of earmarking was substantially reformed since the 110th United States Congress between January 3, 2007, and January 3, 2009. Since 2009, members of Congress had to post all their earmark requests online along with a signed letter certifying that they and their immediate families had no direct financial interest in the earmark.
In March 2010, the House Appropriations Committee implemented rules to ban earmarks to for-profit corporations. Approximately 1,000 such earmarks were authorized in the previous year, worth $1.7 billion. At the time, earmarks constituted less than 1% of the 2010 federal budget, down from about 1.1% in 2006.
After gaining control of the House in 2011, Republicans adopted a House earmark ban. This was controversial within the House Republican Conference, which had internal debates several times over whether to partially lift the ban. The earmark ban is contained in the House Republicans' intraparty rules.
President Obama promised during his State of the Union address in January 2011 to veto any bill that contained earmarks. In February 2011, Congress "imposed a temporary ban on earmarks, money for projects that individual lawmakers slip into major Congressional budget bills to cater to local demands."
In December 2015, Citizens Against Government Waste, claimed in their 2016 Congressional Pig Book, that all the FY2016 earmarks were contained in the December 2016 omnibus 2000-page Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 which authorized $1.15 trillion in appropriations. The CAGW argued that "Throwing all earmarks into one large bill makes it more difficult to identify and eliminate earmarks than if Congress adhered to regular order and considered the 12 appropriations bills individually."
Alternatives to congressional earmarks
Members of Congress can influence priorities and policy-making that promote projects that are important to their constituents by accessing discretionary DOT spending, through regular formula-based funding mechanisms and increased interaction with both transportation official as the federal and state levels.Earmarks and transportation
In January 2017, a report by the CRS described how, prior to the earmarks ban in 2011, Members of Congress had used earmarks to ensure that local congressional representatives, not the Department of Transportation and its Agencies Administration, set priority discretionary transportation spending.Congressional members and DOT administration often disagree on priorities. In FY2007, with an earmark ban in place, President Bush's Administration's divided about $850 million, which represented almost all of the DOT's discretionary annual funding, to traffic congestion mitigation strategies in only five metro areas, Miami, Florida, Minneapolis, Minnesota, San Francisco, California, and Seattle, Washington through the Urban Partnership Agreement.
Debates
Earmarks have often been treated as being synonymous with "pork barrel" legislation. Despite considerable overlap, the two are not the same: what constitutes an earmark is an objective determination, while what is "pork-barrel" spending is subjective. One legislator's "pork" is another's vital project.Scott Frisch and Sean Kelly point out that directing money to particular purposes is a core constitutional function of Congress. If Congress does not make a specific allocation, the task falls to the executive branch. There is no guarantee that the allocation made by executive agencies will be superior to that of Congress. Presidents and executive officials can use the allocation of spending to reward friends and punish enemies.
There are also those who opine that "earmarks are good" because they are more democratic and less bureaucratic than traditional appropriation spending, which generally is not tailored to specific projects.