thebigp

2019 congressional pig book citizens against gov. waste—The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW's annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.
For the second year in a row, members of Congress have set records for the cost and number of earmarks during the supposed earmark moratorium.
Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) 2019 Congressional Pig Book exposes 282 earmarks, an increase of 21.6 percent from the 232 in fiscal year (FY) 2018. The cost of earmarks in FY 2019 is $15.3 billion, an increase of 4.1 percent from the $14.7 billion in FY 2018. Since FY 1991, CAGW has identified 111,144 earmarks costing $359.8 billion.
While the increase in the cost and number of earmarks from FY 2018 is significant, it pales in comparison to the growth since FY 2017. The $15.3 billion in FY 2019 is an increase of 125 percent from the $6.8 billion in FY 2017, and the 282 earmarks in FY 2019 is an increase of 73 percent from the 163 in FY 2017.
The primary cause of this upsurge in earmarks was the February 8, 2018 passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA), which obliterated the spending restraints imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) and paved the way for a 13.4 percent increase in spending in FYs 2018 and 2019. The cost and number of earmarks in each these two years therefore went up by far more than the overall increase in spending.
While the BCA was successful in limiting spending, it was anathema to the members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. It coincided with the imposition of the earmark moratorium, which was first applied in FY 2012.
Nonetheless, CAGW exposed earmarks in the appropriations bills every year since the moratorium. The number and cost for the first six years were much lower than they had been prior to the moratorium. On average, there were 109 earmarks costing $3.7 billion annually between FYs 2012 and 2017. But, like everything else in Congress, the restraint only lasted for a short period of time.
Over the past two years, legislators added an average of 257 earmarks costing $15 billion.
Of course, the explosion of earmarks over the past two years may not be enough for some members of Congress. Prominent legislators from both parties have called for an end to the earmark moratorium, including Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and committee members Susan Collins (R-Maine), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); House appropriators Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho); and leaders like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.).
In a February 28, 2019 letter to the House Appropriations Committee, Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y) announced a delay in the fight to reinstitute an open system of earmarking, stating, “Unfortunately, there is currently not the necessary bipartisan, bicameral agreement to allow the Appropriations Committee to earmark. … For that reason, I do not expect fiscal year 2020 House spending bills to include congressionally-directed spending.” The relatively widespread support in Congress for a return of earmarks all but guarantees that this issue will be revisited.
In this climate, it is worth recalling why this corrupt, inequitable, and costly practice was subject to the moratorium in the first place. The movement gained traction due to the tireless work of members of Congress such as then-Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); high-profile boondoggles such as the Bridge to Nowhere; and a decade of scandals that resulted in jail terms for Reps. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) and Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Earmarks provide the most benefit to those with spots on prime congressional committees. In the 111th Congress, when the names of members of Congress who obtained earmarks were included in the appropriations bills, the 81 House and Senate appropriators, making up 15 percent of Congress, were responsible for 51 percent of the earmarks and 61 percent of the money.
As Sen. McCain explained regarding those making the case for a return to earmarks, “The problem with all their arguments is: the more powerful you are, the more likely it is you get the earmark in. Therefore, it is a corrupt system.”
Another argument centers on the Article I tax and spending power given to Congress. As Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), co-leaders of the Article I Project, wrote in 2017 in regard to earmarks, “Congress needs to assert its power of the purse, but not in this manner.” As practiced in the past, Lee and Hensarling continued, “earmarking was not the innocuous exercise of Congress’ constitutional spending power; it was the tool lobbyists and leadership used to compel members to v**e for bills that their constituents — and sometimes their conscience — opposed.” Bringing back earmarks, they wrote, “would make our job harder, make Congress weaker and make federal power more centralized, less accountable and more corrupt.”
Those sentiments echo President James Monroe’s May 4, 1822 Special Message to Congress regarding its authority to spend money on internal improvements in the U.S.: “It is, however, my opinion that the power should be confined to great national works only, since if it were unlimited it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil.”
One of the more frequently used arguments in favor of earmarks is that they help pass legislation, which even President Trump mentioned on January 9, 2018. But earmarks cause members to v**e for excessively expensive spending bills that cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in exchange for a few earmarks worth a few million or sometimes just thousands of dollars.
The one downside of the earmark moratorium has been a reduction in t***sparency. During FYs 2008 through 2010, the three years prior to the moratorium, members of Congress were required to add their names to projects they were responsible for, and list the specific location of the recipient. This information is no longer available, and earmarks are now found throughout the appropriations bills, increasing the amount of effort necessary for identification, and making it more difficult to eliminate them through floor amendments. Under the old system, earmarks were largely contained in the “Congressionally Directed Spending” section at the end of the legislation.
The FY 2019 earmarks were again contained in omnibus packages, which present their own challenges regarding how the taxpayers’ money is being spent. The first two omnibus bills were passed by the 115th Congress. One bill contained the Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations bills, and was signed into law by the President on September 21, 2018. The second bill contained appropriations for the Department of Defense and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and was signed by the President on September 28, 2018. The final grouping, containing the last seven appropriations bills was passed by the 116th Congress, and signed by the President on February 15, 2019.
In FY 2019, as in each of the years following the establishment of the moratorium, there were fewer earmarks than in the peak years, but far more money was spent on average for each earmark and no detailed description was provided. For instance, legislators added 18 earmarks costing $1,016,856,000 for the Army Corps of Engineers in the FY 2019 Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. These earmarks correspond to 482 earmarks costing $541,653,000 in FY 2010.
In other words, the average dollar amount for the Corps of Engineers earmarks in FY 2019 was $56.5 million, while in FY 2010 the average was $1.1 million. The “Congressionally Directed Spending” section at the end of the FY 2010 bill contained the names of the members of Congress requesting each project and its location, as required by the t***sparency rules at the time. In stark contrast, the FY 2019 earmarks, which cost $475.2 million more than the FY 2010 projects, contained no such data and simply created a pool of money to be distributed later without any specific information about the eventual recipients.
Members of Congress will argue that their standards differ from the earmark criteria used in the Pig Book, and that the appropriations bills are earmark-free according to their definition. However, the difference in the definition of earmarks between CAGW and Congress has existed since the first Pig Book in 1991.
The pork-free claim can also be challenged based on the inclusion of projects that have appeared in past appropriations bills as earmarks. In addition to meeting CAGW’s long-standing seven-point criteria, to qualify for the 2019 Pig Book a project must have appeared in prior years as an earmark. The total number and cost of earmarks are, therefore, quite conservative.
The question for those in Congress who deny the existence of earmarks in the appropriations bills is: Why were these projects previously considered earmarks, but not in FY 2019?
The 27th installment of CAGW’s exposé of pork-barrel spending includes $1.8 billion for 16 extra F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, which has been plagued with cost overruns, delays, and poor performance; $960 million for the Littoral Combat Ship, which is ridden with excessive costs and an ill-defined mission; $16.7 million for the East-West Center, added by Senate Appropriations Committee member Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), even though there was no budget request; $13 million for Save America’s Treasures grants, which in the past have funded the restoration and operation of local museums, opera houses, and theaters; $9 million for a fruit fly quarantine program; and, $863,000 to help eliminate the brown tree snake.
The projects in the 2019 Congressional Pig Book Summary symbolize the most blatant examples of pork. As in previous years, all items in the Congressional Pig Book meet at least one of CAGW’s seven criteria, but most satisfy at least two:
• Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
• Not specifically authorized;
• Not competitively awarded;
• Not requested by the President;
• Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
• Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
• Serves only a local or special interest.
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