Constitution State News

An alliance of 18 conservative non-profit advocacy groups that oppose the return of earmarks to congressional spending has issued a letter to all 535 senators and representatives warning them that taxpayers “want an end to business-as-usual.”

The coalition’s warning comes after plans by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) to restore the practice under the new title of “member-directed spending.”

Congress temporarily banned earmarks in 2011, with the Trump government permanently banning them in 2019. Democrats have now signaled interest in reviving them.

Earmarks are provisions that allow individual congressmembers to direct tax dollars, often anonymously, to family members, friends, and campaign donors. They are not singularly voted on but become law when the larger bills in which they are included are approved.

The history of earmarks is filled with abuse and corruption, the coalition said.

Since 1991, according to Citizens Against Government Waste’s “Congressional Pig Book,” there have been 111,417 earmarks costing taxpayers $375.7 billion, including $67.9 billion since the earmark moratorium was adopted in 2011,” the letter said, The Epoch Times reported. "In 2006, one year after the 2005 highway bill had $24 billion in earmarks, including the “infamous Bridge to Nowhere,” appropriations earmarks totaled a record $29 billion. That was also the year Republicans lost the majority in the House of Representatives, followed soon thereafter by the incarceration of members of Congress, staff, and lobbyists as a result of the corruption associated with earmarks.”

The coalition went on to deny claims that earmarks are a necessary way of unifying Congress at a time when it is divided between the two major parties.

“Proponents of earmarks argue that they would promote the passage of appropriations bills in a timely manner, but this is proven false by the fact that appropriations bills have been enacted on time in only four years since the passage of the 1974 Budget Act,” the letter said, according to The Epoch Times. 

The coalition added; “In fact, they waste the taxpayers’ money as a form of ‘legalized bribery,’ under which a few million dollars in earmarks are traded for votes in favor of hundreds of billions of dollars in spending.  It makes no sense to believe that earmarks, which never constituted more than 1 percent of discretionary spending, would drive or control agreement on the remaining 99 percent of such spending."

Some Republicans have backed the renewal of earmarks. George Callas, former chief of staff for then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) praised the practice during a Twitter exchange that is no longer available. 

“Earmarks also benefit a functional legislative and governing process. I’d be more than willing to accept a little old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill corruption if it meant reducing the macro-level dysfunction from which we now suffer,” he tweeted, as reported The Epoch Times.

Callas was responding to a tweet by Courtney Shaddegg, a former aide to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who strongly opposed earmarks and supported the 2011 congressional ban.

“The thing I think you’re saying here is we can do a little more legislation if we accept a little corruption and that’s just not good enough for me, and the American people shouldn’t accept it either," Shaddegg wrote, responding back to Callas, The Epoch Times reported. 

This is the list of signers of the coalition letter: Tom Schatz, president of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, David Williams, president of Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Signers also include: Michael A. Needham, chief executive officer of Heritage Action for America, George Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom, Saul Anuzis, president of the 60 Plus Association, James L. Martin, founder and chairman of the 60 Plus Association, Bethany Marcum, president of the Alaska Policy Forum, Jeffrey Mazzella, president of the Center for Individual Freedom, James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, Kevin Waterman, president of the Annapolis Center-Right Coalition Meeting, and Matthew Gagnon, president of the Maine Heritage Policy Center.