Please forgive our mangled Shakespeare; we were just looking for an artful way to point out that, while Montana voters claim to hate “pork” with a passion, we're just as passionate about wanting our congressional delegates to bring home the bacon.
Sure, we laugh along when a “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska is lampooned - but we bristle when money to study the DNA of Grizzly bears in Montana draws similar criticism. We also blast Congress for not reining in pork-barrel spending, all the while putting enormous pressure on Montana's congressional delegation to find funding for local and state projects.
While the numbers trumpeted by the nonprofit Citizens Against Government Waste appear to be sound, in the interest of transparency we must also point out that the group is one of several that accepted money from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and that last year Sen. Max Baucus was among those calling for an investigation into whether these groups took payments in exchange for authoring slanted studies and news releases, among other alleged offenses.
In its report released this month, Citizens Against Government Waste gleefully pointed out that Baucus has $125 million in earmarks this year, while Sen. Jon Tester has about $93 million. Buried deeper in the report, which listed a total of more than 11,600 special projects tying up more than $17 billion in federal funds, is Rep. Denny Rehberg's $45 million.
While it's one thing to wag our fingers over how much federal money is being earmarked, and another to examine whether those earmarks are going to worthy projects.
Earmarks, in a nut shell, are special provisions for projects in a congressional delegate's home state or district. Contrary to popular belief, they are not requests for more money, but rather specific directives for how a portion of the budget must be spent. Unfortunately, these provisions are often added to budgets shortly before they go up for a vote, leaving very little time for representatives and senators to review and question them. This means that most earmarks get approved without any sort of debate, a situation that makes them all the more tempting to our elected officials.
Unfortunately, earmarks also tend to sail through Congress without much notice. Some state senators and representatives willingly provide lists of requested earmarks to members of the public and the media upon request, but not all, and not usually before the earmark is secured.
Congress has taken steps to remedy this lack of oversight in recent years, passing legislation to make senators who request special provisions accountable for their requests, and requiring representatives to share more information. However, these attempts have done little to stem the ever-increasing number of earmarks.
Some members of Congress have even tried to declare a moratorium on all earmark requests, only to see it fail as delegates continued to push their home-state interests.
There are times when the use of federal money for specific projects in Montana is entirely warranted. However, it is impossible to prioritize them in any meaningful way unless those projects are subject to public scrutiny. In order to do that, earmarks must be requested at the earliest possible opportunity, and they must be much more transparent than they are now. We need to know not only how much money is being requested, but also who is making the request and what it's for - and we need to know before the special appropriation is secured.
Montana's congressional delegates opened a new door to public involvement when they began posting their daily schedules on their Web sites. Wouldn't it be wonderful of if Baucus, Tester and Rehberg began posting a list of earmark requests on their Web sites as well?
If our congressional delegates are willing to make earmarks a little more transparent - and a lot more accessible - we suspect Montana voters will thank them for it. And then we can all finally stop referring to earmarks as “pork.”
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