EDITORIAL: Move to revive earmarks is bad politics and bad policy

When Republicans took control of the U.S. House in 2011, they moved quickly to ban earmarks. The move was part of a noble effort to fight wasteful federal spending.

Fast forward seven years. Congress and President Donald Trump are now foolishly considering a revival of earmarks, arguing that, without them, Washington can’t work properly.

What utter nonsense. There are many reasons Washington is mired in dysfunction, and a lack of earmarks is far down the list.

Earmarks are pet projects that members of Congress used to slip into appropriation bills in order to deliver the bacon to their constituents back home. Some of these projects can be quite ridiculous. (Remember Alaska’s $233 million Bridge to Nowhere that connected the state’s mainland to an island inhabited by 50 people? How about $500,000 for a teapot museum in North Carolina? Or $3.4 million for a turtle crossing tunnel in Florida?)

After the 2016 election, Speaker Paul Ryan balked at reviving earmarks, but he now says he supports a public debate about the proposal. The House Committee on Rules was scheduled to hold two hearings on the issue of earmarks next week. The idea is that allowing more pork will create some sort of mutual self-interest among members of both parties, magically fostering congressional comity.

Kumbaya, we can now spend more of other people’s money to facilitate our own re-elections!

But as Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense points out, one of the main problems with earmarks is that they have been typically — and unethically — slipped into legislation at the last minute in order to win votes, with virtually no oversight of how the money is spent.

Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., says the idea to resuscitate earmarks is picking up steam because many current House Republicans took their seats after the 2011 ban and have “little memory of past abuses.” He says they never had to sit through meetings where lobbyists “pressed them to grovel before the Appropriations Committee for pork.”

“When earmarks were allowed and encouraged, bills passed on shady favors and chumminess rather than on their merits,” he wrote in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. “This practice helped produce what we now call the swamp. It wasn’t so long ago that the GOP used a platform of banning earmarks and controlling spending to help ride a major political wave and take control of the House.”

He’s right. Allowing earmarks again would be bad politics and bad policy.

Congress needs to get its spending addiction under control, not sanction another avenue for wasteful and parochial expenditures. House Republicans should come to their senses on this issue.