Tangle - The return of earmarks (pork).

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Earmarks are back. Sometimes called member-directed spending, pork, pork-barrelling, bacon, fat, or fluff, earmarks are funding for projects that get inserted into legislation at the request of specific members of Congress, usually in an effort to win over that member's vote (think of it as politically acceptable coercion, even bribery).You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's podcast, we are going to be talking about earmarks. And on today's podcast, we are going to be talking about earmarks, pork, the pork barreling, the special favors members of Congress pass around when they pass legislation. As always, though, before we jump in, we'll start with some quick hits and today, unfortunately,

a correction from yesterday's podcast and newsletter. I don't know how this happened exactly, but yesterday I referenced the staged Jussie Smollett attack that happened, quote, in the summer of the 2020 George Floyd protests. This is basically all wrong. The staged attack happened in the winter, notoriously, and in January of 2019, though it did lead to a lot of skepticism around other alleged racially motivated attacks that came in the first year or two afterward. And I think the whole incident, in a lot of ways, kind of got tied into the George Floyd protests and the racial justice movement from many critics. So I don't know what happened

to my brain. Time is a flat circle, and I might be broken after the last two years of news coverage and COVID and whatever. I got it wrong. So this is the 57th Tangle correction in its 139 week history and the first correction since March 8th, which was exactly a week ago. The podcast was off, so I didn't have to do this when that happened. I track corrections and place them in the beginning of the podcast and at the top of our newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers. All right. So with that out of the way, we'll move into the quick hits for today. First up, the United Nations says three million refugees have now fled Ukraine. Last night, a 35-hour curfew was instituted in Kiev, where Russia's assault has intensified. Number two, Senator Joe Manchin said he will not vote to confirm Sarah Bloom

Raskin, who was nominated to be the top banking regulator on the Federal Reserve. Raskin is well known for her criticism of big oil. Number three, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that a nuclear conflict was, quote, within the realm of possibility as Russia's war in Ukraine unfolds. Number four, at least four House Democrats have now tested positive for COVID-19 since their annual retreat in Philadelphia. Number five, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will not be able to appeal a decision in a top United Kingdom court to extradite him to the United States. The extradition still requires government approval. So for today's topic, we are covering earmarks. Sometimes called member-directed spending,

pork, pork barreling, bacon, fat, or fluff, earmarks are funding or projects that get inserted into legislation at the request of specific members of Congress, usually in an effort to win over that member's vote. Think of it kind of like a good-natured and politically acceptable coercion, even a bribery. Usually, earmarks are not spending commitments added into a bill, but instead are ways of cutting up allocated money that benefits certain districts or projects. For decades, earmarks were a critical part of pushing through major legislation, but in the early 2000s, the public soured on them, beginning to view them as open bribes and wasteful spending after they became closely tied to several scandals. Perhaps most infamous of these was the

quote, Bridge to Nowhere, a $223 million earmark that was drafted in 2005 to connect the Alaskan town of Ketchikan to its nearby island airport. The earmark was lifted and the bridge never happened. There was also Jack Abramoff, the infamous lobbyist who went to prison on fraud charges tied to earmarks being used as bribes. In 2007, Democrats attempted to reform earmarks by requiring that they be publicly disclosed. In 2011, Republicans took over Congress and banned them outright. Following that move, though, legislative efforts in Congress ground to a halt, so much so that former President Donald Trump even suggested bringing earmarks back as a way to help pass immigration reform.

Then, in 2021, Democrats brought earmarks back, a moment that we actually covered in Tangle. But last week, when Congress passed its $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill, after 11 years of no earmarks, they returned in earnest. More than 4,000 earmarks were included in the bill, according to a 367-page list obtained by The Hill. included in the bill, according to a 367-page list obtained by The Hill. Senator Chuck Schumer, for example, was tied to 59 earmarks totaling $80 million in funding in the omnibus's transportation and housing and urban development section alone. Senator Mike Braun, the Republican from Indiana, said Schumer's name was attached to 142 earmarks. In Punchbowl News, a number of Democrats were cited for their roles in connection with certain earmarks. Senator Punchbowl News, a number of Democrats were cited for their roles in connection

with certain earmarks. Senator Mark Kelly, the Democrat from Arizona, got more than $80 million in construction funds for three military bases and $59 million for a light rail project in Phoenix. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Democrat, helped secure hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for local police forces, a key issue for the former state attorney general. Representative Mike Levin, the Democrat from California, got more than $21 million for his district, including federal aid for some major beach restoration work. Frontliners who serve on the House Appropriations Committee raked in bucks. Representative Sanford Bishop, the Democrat from Georgia, a member of the House Appropriations Committee raked in bucks. Representative Sanford Bishop, the Democrat from Georgia, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, got $11 million for his district alone.

Republicans made out too. Senator Richard Shelby, the Republican from Alabama, got hundreds of millions of dollars for Alabama, including a $76 million grant for the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine to build a new biomedical research building. Representative Mike Turney, a Republican from Ohio, got $4.6 million for the Dayton Arcade, a downtown center for business and the arts. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, the Republican from Louisiana, hauled in $1 million for a mobile screening project for a hospital north of New Orleans. And there were plenty of others. We actually linked to a Google Doc of them in today's newsletter. In a moment, you're going to hear some arguments about the return of earmarks from the left and the right, and then my take. You can read some of our previous coverage if you go to our newsletter and click a link in today's issue. All right, first up, we'll start with what the left is saying.

The left argues in favor of earmarks, saying they will get Congress legislating again. Some say earmarks will force certain members to actually do their jobs. Others point out that the ban on earmarks did little to solve major spending issues. Chris Saliza said the actual impact of banning earmarks was very different from what those who pushed the ban hardest believed it would be. What happened in practice was that leaders in both parties lost leverage over their rank-and-file members, Saliza said. They no longer had a carrot to dangle in front of wavering members to get them to sign on to a piece of legislation where the vote was tight. That loss of leverage was compounded by the rise of third-party groups led by super PACs over the past decade. Their ascension signaled a diminution in the power of political parties. No longer could party leaders overseeing campaign

committees bend members to their will by offering or withholding support. Add those two factors together and you get developments like the rise of the House Freedom Caucus, a rump group that has no loyalty to or fear of party leaders. And over the last decade, it's the extremes, like those represented by the Freedom Caucus, who have increasingly had influence in Congress, he added. The simple fact is that without your marks in the modern political climate, congressional leadership has no tools to cajole and convince lawmakers for anything. The default position has therefore been no. Obstruction on everything has been the order of the day. Now, just because earmarks are back doesn't mean legislation will be rolling through Congress immediately, but it does mean that party leaders now have at least some real ability to

persuade their members on key bills, which makes a world of difference. In the New Republic, Jason Lincoln said the return of earmarks is bad news for MAGA performance artists who now have to do real legislative work. The Republican Party's retreat from meaningful policymaking in recent years hasn't just ensured that robust and productive debates over governance and ideas have faded from the scene, Lincoln said. The vacuum produced by the lack of substantive activity has created opportunities for a new breed of troll lawmaker to fill it with a never-ending display of own-the-libs spectacles. The newly minted members of Congress, from the MAGA QAnon set, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert, have been this movement's leading lights, and they barely pretend that they have a legitimate role to play as lawmakers. How will bringing earmarks help tamp down these wild and untamed MAGA members of Congress?

Well, earmarks will help responsible Congresspersons draw a stark contrast with their idiotic colleagues, Lincoln said. The primary purpose of a member of Congress is to allocate and spend taxpayer money. Thanks to the formal ban on earmarks, they've been doing it with one hand tied behind their back. Moreover, the lack of earmarks has allowed Greene and Boebert to luck into a situation where they can thrive in Congress doing little more than occasional headline-grabbing stunts. But if Congress reverts to its former earmark-happy self, touching off a hunt for money and perks to bring back home to constituents, then that will require a different skill set for members to succeed,

one that I do not believe members like Green currently possess. In 2021, Anna Lowry wrote simply that earmarks are good. In 2010, the Tea Party secured a ban on earmarks, Lowry wrote, but getting rid of them did not tamp down government spending as the Tea Party wanted, and it had unintended consequences, including making it that much harder for Congress to get anything done. Pushes for an earmark moratorium a decade ago, politicians on both sides of the aisle tended to make two arguments. The first had to do with cost and waste. Fiscal hawks railed against earmarks as expensive. The 9,129 pork barrel projects approved for fiscal year 2010 cost something like $17 billion.

Worse, earmarks sometimes finance unnecessary or even ridiculous-seeming vanity projects, bridges to nowhere, teapot museums, indoor rainforests. The second argument had to do with process and good governance, she said. In the 1990s and 2000s, earmarks were implicated in any number of scandals. Unscrupulous politicians traded them for campaign contributions or directed projects to friends in exchange for kickbacks. But earmarks were never a cause of government bloat or a driver of the federal debt. At its peak, pork barrel spending made up a tiny sliver of the government budget. Earmarks were never that wasteful either.

Most of the money went to reasonable projects. Bridges, community centers, worker training programs, schools. Those are the kinds of things the government exists to finance. Voters like them, communities need them, and members of Congress, with their intimate knowledge of their district, are often pretty good at knowing where to put them. Okay, that brings us to what the right is saying. The right argues against earmarks, saying they are inviting wasteful spending and absurd projects that could be funded elsewhere. They say the new process is just as opaque as the old one. They say earmarks are an invitation to corruption.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. In Reason, Eric Bohm wrote that earmarks are back and just as sleazy as ever. Yes, each of those items is only a few drops in the ocean of government spending, but they add up, Bohm wrote. And the bigger problem with earmarks has always been that they are secretive and opaque, often slipped into legislation with no public oversight or process for determining whether the spending is really needed. That makes them ripe for corruption and suggests that lawmakers are well aware that many requests

wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. It's often not even clear which lawmaker has requested what spending, which makes it difficult for voters to hold anyone accountable after the fact. Other advocates for resurrecting earmarks promised that doling out pork could be done in a way that was more transparent and accountable. When the House Select Committee published a 2020 report proposing the return of earmarks, it promised that the new earmarks would be transparent, trackable online, and subject to greater scrutiny before being approved. Is that what we got in this omnibus bill? Hardly. Instead, lawmakers rushed a 2,700-page bill through both the House and Senate just days after the text was unveiled. There's no website tracking earmarks, no public process for connecting lawmakers to certain requests, and reporters and analysts

have had to sift through the text of the bill to identify projects, which, again, are identified only by spending amounts and locations. $3 million for a history museum in Palo Alto, for example. Braun's office has helpfully published information about which members have requested which projects, but that's a far cry from the level of transparency that was promised. In The Federalist, Christopher Jacobs said the pork fest demonstrated Washington corruption. In The Federalist, Christopher Jacobs said the pork fest demonstrated Washington corruption. The piece de resistance of Washington corruption came with the return of earmarks, 367 pages of them. At a time when our nation faces $30 trillion in debt, not to mention rising inflation,

lawmakers saw fit to spend your money on things like $3 million for a museum dedicated to the life of Mahatma Gandhi. The problem comes not just from spending on such comparatively frivolous projects that local governments or non-profits can and should fund instead of Washington. The projects give lawmakers a reason to vote for otherwise extravagant and fiscally irresponsible legislation. One argument made by earmark supporters contains at least a bit of logic to it, if only on the surface. Defenders of earmarks argue that if lawmakers can't request earmarks, it gives executive branch officials disproportionate power to choose which projects get funded. As someone who opposes giving power to unelected bureaucrats, this theory holds superficial appeal, Jacobs wrote. But the true argument

for limited government, the one that pro-pork earmarkers dare not make, reveals its specious nature. If lawmakers don't want to give unelected bureaucrats additional power, they should lower federal spending and reduce the federal workforce while they're at it. But appropriators never want to lower federal spending because to do so would reduce their own power. In Heritage, Matthew Dickerson noted earmarks as one of the ways the omnibus bill was a huge mistake. The massive omnibus spending bill includes thousands of earmarks funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to special interest pork projects, Dickerson wrote. These earmarks, airdropped into the final omnibus bill with little transparency, have not been thoroughly vetted.

Earmarks have a history of culture of wasteful spending and corruption, with several former members of Congress having been convicted of crimes related to earmarking. Despite the attempted spin from some proponents of earmarking, spending carve-outs for local parochial projects that have nothing to do with carrying out the federal government's limited enumerated powers are most decidedly not a valid tool for Congress's Article I power of the purse, he wrote. A decade after conservatives won a majority victory by banning earmarks, this omnibus spending bill is instead a win for the swamp of Washington, D.C. All right, so that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take.

So when I wrote about this in February of 2021, when it was first announced that earmarks were coming back, my position was basically this. Earmarks invite corruption. They often did not benefit the underserved districts they were allegedly helping, and they can sometimes be used to grind Congress to a halt, not just grease the wheels. I also expressed deep skepticism about the quote-unquote reforms to improve earmarks. Basically, I bought the argument most commonly sold on the right. After seeing this process unfold, though, I have to say, assuming nothing changes, I was right about the reforms. As Eric Bone pointed out, none of the promise reforms

came to fruition. Where is the website tracking earmarks? Where do I find the data connecting lawmakers to certain requests? Where is the promised transparency? It doesn't exist. One Republican lawmaker is sharing information with reporters who are simultaneously digging through a 2,700-page bill to get any answers. This is entirely unacceptable, and if it doesn't change, as Democrats promise, then earmarks should get thrown out again. But I also think, in retrospect, this may be a net positive if you zoom out. Remember, the entire point of banning earmarks was to limit government spending, stop backroom corruption, read bribery, and reduce wastefulness. But banning them really did none of those things in any tangible way. In the 12 years since earmarks were banned, spending has continued to balloon, waste is still rampant, and members of Congress are still finding new ways to make corrupt deals.

Basically, we didn't really solve any of those issues. And on top of all that, we created new problems. Single members are regularly grinding Congress to a halt, we have more government shutdowns, Congress has become increasingly ineffective, and community projects are harder to fund. Not to mention the inability of Congress to legislate is likely a huge reason for the reliance on executive orders and the politicizing of the judicial branch seen over the past three administrations, something derided on both sides of the aisle. Earmark spending is also a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. Earmarks in this bill were limited to 1% of the total funding, so $15 billion of the $1.5 trillion.

Members have only allocated $10 billion so far, just two- support from communities for these projects, and were prohibited from steering money to private for-profit companies, meaning that most requests were for things like hospitals, schools, non-profits, and municipal authorities. In the House, individual members could only get 10 requests each. All of these reforms are good. They aren't enough, but they're a step in the right direction. I also found Jason Lincoln's argument compelling, which is that earmarks will get members of Congress doing their jobs again, especially those who spend more time on Twitter than they do legislating. The last 12 years have been a bastion of obstruction, bickering, holdouts, and refusal to play ball. And while Republicans have a well-earned reputation for obstruction, it wasn't just them. Democrats under Trump played

their games too, and now senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, or representatives like the Squad, can hold entire bills hostage with no mechanism for unmooring them. And honestly, without any other mechanism for political action, it's hard to blame them. In sum, the process on this bill was still worrisome, and the promised reforms need to come more clearly to fruition. But the pork will only account for at most 1% of the overall cost. And based on reports I've seen, most of it is going to desired projects that will improve the communities of the members who place the earmarks. In the end, isn't that what we actually want from Congress? All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. Bob from Palos Heights, Illinois, I think that's how you pronounce it. I apologize if it's not.

Wrote in saying, I don't understand how you can say voter ID isn't important. I think this is a reference to something I sort of offhandedly said in a past newsletter, but I don't think I've ever said voter ID wasn't important. I have made the argument that it doesn't do much of what either side says it does. So the general argument from the right is that voter ID laws stop voter fraud. The general argument from the left is that voter ID laws suppress turnout. The consensus, though, from most research is that it really doesn't do either of those things. The reasons for this are complicated. For starters,

both election fraud and voter fraud, two different things by the way, are still extremely rare. Yes, I promise this is true. So adding IDs into a process that is mostly unhindered doesn't really do anything anyway. On suppression, it's also complicated. When voter ID laws are instituted, there is often a big uproar of opposition, which can increase turnout. So it may not be that the laws have no impact, just that the effects they would have are blown away by the attention and anger they create. Some studies have found voter ID laws can reduce turnout by, say, 1% to 3%, which is enough to change an election outcome. But those findings are not consistent. Others have actually shown they increase turnout. There is a piece I linked to today from German Lopez, who does a good job of breaking down the research we have. Harvard Business School, who studied this, also explained their research in

a link I shared in today's newsletter, and other nationwide studies have affirmed this. I'm sure more work needs to be done, and I'm sure more research needs to be done, but yes, while it's true there are lots of barriers both to getting an ID, I basically think voter ID laws get far more attention than they deserve from both sides. All right, that brings us to our story that matters today. As many as 16 million Americans, including millions of children, are expected to fall off Medicaid rolls when the COVID-19 public health emergency officially ends. States across the country face a Herculean task to sort out who should remain on Medicaid and who needs to be removed after they swelled to their largest levels ever during the pandemic. The issue arises because the federal government, as part of a 2020 coronavirus relief bill, gave states extra

money to cover Medicaid if they promised not to move anyone off the program for the duration of because the federal government, as part of a 2020 coronavirus relief bill, gave states extra money to cover Medicaid if they promised not to move anyone off the program for the duration of the emergency. Every state took the deal, expecting it to be a short-term fix, but in the two years since, Medicaid caseloads have risen 22%. Once the national emergency is lifted, which could happen soon, every state will have to sort out who is supposed to remain and who no longer has eligibility. The Washington Post has the story. There's a link to it in today's newsletter and the big, big storm that might be coming because of it. All right, that is it for our story that matters, which brings us to our numbers section. Story That Matters, which brings us to our numbers section. The length in pages of the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill was $2,741. The amount of money per day allocated in the omnibus spending

package was $4.19 billion. The amount of money from 28 earmarks Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia, collected in the transportation and housing section of the omnibus bill was $41 million. The amount of money Manchin secured from the bipartisan infrastructure bill for West Virginia was $6 billion. Approximately 4,000 was the total number of earmarks tallied so far in the omnibus spending package, and approximately 9,000 was the total number of earmarks in the 2010 appropriations bill the last time earmarks were allowed. Alright, last but not least, our have a nice day section. This is a story from Colorado where a skier and snowboarder survived an avalanche in the backcountry area of Monarch Pass. The skier deployed his airbag and was able to get out from the avalanche unassisted.

But the snowboarder was buried and had to be extricated. Pass. The skier deployed his airbag and was able to get out from the avalanche unassisted, but the snowboarder was buried and had to be extricated. This was a couple actually stuck in the snow, and missing was their dog, who was presumed dead. But on Saturday night, the dog was found at a trailhead on Monarch Pass by another set of adventurers. Miraculously, the dog survived and made it back to Monarch Pass after spending many nights in the cold weather, Brian Lazar, a deputy director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, told the news. KDVR has the story. It's worth checking out. It is pretty wild and also pretty uplifting. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our

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Thanks, and as always, we'll be back right blow this thing up. So I appreciate it. Thanks. And as always, we'll be back right here this time tomorrow. Peace. Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.