Many people define congressional earmarks broadly enough to include major changes that Congress wishes to make in budget requests. A mistake. Major congressional decisions should be taken out of the definition.

When the administration doesn’t propose something that Congress wants – e.g. vehicle armor for Humvees, additional levees for New Orleans, county agricultural extension services, stem cell research, a couple of destroyers of the type made at Bath – Congress often acts on its own by including its intentions as a part of an administration bill. It’s a technique to avoid veto. By forbidding congressional earmarks under that broad interpretation, much of the constitutional spending authority granted Congress would be struck down. Congress would be limited to saying no – hardly what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

A workable definition of what can fairly be called “pork” might be : “Federal funds inserted into the budget process through privilege or outside of normal, formula-driven committee action.”

And the critics are correct – pork can surely be abused. Alaska, the “welfare queen” of earmarks, is proof. In two years, Wasilla, the fourth largest city in Alaska (population 7,011) received more than $1,000 per person for sewers, streets and part of the cost of a hockey rink. For Gorham, Westbrook and Scarborough, this per capita spending would mean nearly $60 million.

Wasilla to the contrary, earmarks are, like most things, neither all good nor all bad. And there is much to be said for the good.

First of all: “Pork” has always been small potatoes in the overall federal money harvest. It is typically less than 1 percent of the budget. Compare a $4 billion earmark average for the last four years with this year’s $200 billion for Iraq, $480 billion for defense, $160 billion for ethanol. How about $700 billion to bail out Wall Street? How about $1 billion to the country of Georgia just to stick our finger in the eye of Mr. Putin?

Congress was given the power of the purse – and rightly so. Using this power with discretion can be one of its most productive and responsive functions. Earmarks often provide an escape from bureaucratic sludge by providing a method by which local ideas, beliefs and needs can be met quickly and efficiently. The bureaucracy (administration) operates the machinery of a huge and diverse country – machinery that is often ponderous and out of local touch. But who knows local needs any better than a person in Congress – who can see a problem and address it quickly?

A comparison of recent earmark history is revealing. With the 2006 election of a new Congress, earmarks were essentially abandoned for fiscal year 2007. Prior to that year, federal

“grants” for local bus (transportation) needs had been provided by Congress. In 2007, the Department of Transportation ran the program by asking municipalities to compete by means of formal proposals. The necessary “experts” for proper proposals were often out of reach for simple country folk, and those not prepared to participate were left out of the process. In that fiscal year six proposals in five states were approved for buses and bus routes.

Then, in fiscal year 2008, earmarks were resumed. Grants in the same program mounted to 313 proposals in 43 states for the same purpose.

Was the FY08 system wasteful? Or did Congress intend from the very beginning to provide major help all across the U.S. for transportation needs – and that intent had not been served in

FY07?

Consider another program: COPS (Community-Oriented Policing) was established to fight crime. In FY07, only 37 grants to 26 communities were given (and, by the way, none of the 10 most dangerous cities in crime statistics were included). In FY08, when Congress resumed earmarks, 560 grants were given in 42 states.

It is true. Earmarks have been abused. But it is also true that they can serve a valuable purpose, and straightforward rules can go a long way toward making them all valuable: 1. Require all individual earmarks to have a full committee vote.

2. Publish individual earmark requests, including cost, justification and name of sponsor in advance. 3. Make the information public.

It’s that easy

Those who wish to “kill earmarks” should remember that the first earmark in U.S. history was inserted by Congressman George Thatcher of Massachusetts.

It was $1,500 to complete the construction of Portland Light House.

Rodney Quinn, who lives in Gorham, is a former Maine secretary of state. He can be contacted at [email protected].