A look at congressional earmarks

Some call them "pork." Others say "pet projects" or "earmarks."

Whatever you call them, lawmakers' special projects for people back home are proving to be an enormous headache for Democrats controlling Congress, just as they bedeviled Republicans when they were in charge.

House Republicans are demanding that Democrats live up to a promise of more openness in acting on "earmarks" _ those dams, armories, bridges, courthouses, research grants and other projects that lawmakers send home to their districts and states.

What are earmarks? How do they work? Why the fuss? Here are some answers to such questions.

Q: What is an earmark?

A: Most often, it is a pet projects that lawmakers seek for their districts and states. It can include road projects, water and sewer funds, community development grants, military base improvements and grants to local hospitals, universities and nonprofit organizations.

Earmarks can be tax breaks aimed at a specific company or research grants for a single employer. Such companies often reward lawmakers with campaign cash. In the case of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., it was bribes.

Q: What does a lawmaker have to do to get an earmark put in a bill?

A: In the case of appropriations bills, there is an application process. Lawmakers fill out forms and say which projects they want the most. Staff and lawmakers scrutinize to make sure everybody's following the rules and to weed out bad ideas. The party controlling the House or Senate gets about 60 percent of the earmarks allocated to each chamber.

Q: How can you find them?

A: Often, it's easy. In spending bills, rosters of earmarks are listed in reports accompanying bills. And with Internet search engines, it's often not that hard to figure out what's going on with an earmark and whether one thinks it's worthwhile.

But some earmarks, such as tax breaks benefiting individual companies or carefully worded criteria that guide agencies to award contracts or projects to selected companies or areas can be virtually impossible to trace _ unless one of the few lawmakers in the know tattles on the beneficiary.

Q: How do they work?

A: Lawmakers essentially are ordering agencies to spend money in ways Congress demands instead of awarding money based on formulas or at the discretion of bureaucrats. For example, a House member representing Waco, Texas, might direct the Justice Department to reward the city with an anti-crime or police hiring grant instead of having city officials apply for the money.

Q: So what's wrong with that?

A: Nothing. Virtually all lawmakers say they have a right to use Congress' power of the purse to direct public money to their district and state. After all, they know their districts better than do federal bureaucrats.

But lawmakers get greedy and pushy, and some earmarks are just plain dumb: the $50 million earmark approved years ago to build an indoor rain forest in the middle of Iowa.

In recent years, under GOP control of Congress, earmarking practices have gotten out of control. In 2005, according to the White House budget office, there were 13,492 earmarks in appropriations bills totaling almost $19 billion.

Q: What is being done about them?

A: Democrats imposed a one-year ban on earmarks when finishing up last year's spending bills and they pledge to cut earmarks in half from prior levels. President Bush is demanding that the number and total cost of earmarks be cut in half.

Democrats largely have adopted GOP changes put in place last year requiring that earmarks placed in bills be identified, along with their sponsors. The idea is that greater disclosure will serve to keep wasteful projects out of the bills.

But the House Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., has sidestepped the reforms by keeping bills free of earmarks during initial House debate, depriving rank and file lawmakers the chance to force votes to knock them out of bills.

Q: Does more openness work?

A: Are you kidding? Virtually every time anti-earmark lawmakers try to kill stuff they say is pork, they lose by overwhelming votes. But the "bridge to nowhere," a $223 million project connecting Alaska's lightly populated Gravina Island to Ketchikan was shelved after it drew scorn from the media and the public.

Q: Does the president propose earmarks?

A: All the time. Bush's agencies propose the vast majority of projects and award the vast majority of grants and federal contracts. They sometimes appear to favor Republicans; for example the Homeland Security Department's fire grants program has rewarded GOP districts with three-fifths of all grants.

At the same time, the Education Department bureaucrats has pressed school districts that want reading improvement grants to buy materials from contractors favored by GOP officials.