1. United States
    Definitions  Appropriation committees  Value  Legislation  Alternatives to congressional earmarks  Earmarks and transportation  Debates  In popular culture 

2. South Africa

3. See also

4. References

5. External links

An earmark is a provision inserted into a discretionary spending appropriations bill that directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or competitive funds allocation process. Earmarks feature in American and South African public finance.

Unlike the spoils system, earmarks do not increase public spending as a direct effect; an earmark considered in isolation merely shift funds from one recipient to another. However, earmarks often feature prominently in the political horse trading required to enact legislation, and may create or abet perverse incentives in this realm.{{citation needed|date=December 2018}} Additionally, due to its surface structure as a zero-sum game, it can serve to promote petty regionalism, where the public interest might have been better served by constituents organizing on a larger scale, to contest issues of greater import.{{citation needed|date=December 2018}} On the flip side, political bargaining around earmarks might usefully contribute to the process of reaching bipartisan consensus on a legislative agenda, ameliorating the negative public consequences of legislative gridlock.{{citation needed|date=December 2018}}

"Earmark" comes from the livestock term, where the ears of domestic animals were cut in specific ways so that farmers could distinguish their stock from others grazing on public land. In particular, the term comes from earmarked hogs where, by analogy, pork-barreled legislation would be doled out among members of the local political machine.^[1]

United States

In the United States, the term earmark is used in relation with the congressional allocation process.

^[2]{{rp|36}}

Discretionary spending, which is set by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and their various subcommittees, usually through appropriation acts, is an optional part of fiscal policy which differs from mandatory spending for entitlement programs in the federal budget.

Definitions

In 2006 the Congressional Research Service (CRS) compiled a report on the use of earmarks in thirteen Appropriation Acts from 1994 through 2005 in which they noted that there was "not a single definition of the term earmark accepted by all practitioners and observers of the appropriations process, nor [was] there a standard earmark practice across all appropriation bills."^[6]{{rp|2}} It was noted at that time, that while the CRS did not summarize earmarks that they came in two varieties: hard earmarks, or "hardmarks", found in legislation, and soft earmarks, or "softmarks", found in the text of congressional committee reports. Hard earmarks are legally binding, whereas soft earmarks are not but are customarily acted upon as if they were.^[5][6] The CRS did not aggregate the "varying definitions" as the result would be invalid.^[6]{{rp|3}}^[10]{{rp|4}}

By 2006, the definition most widely used, developed by the Congressional Research Service, the public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress was,^[7]

According to the federal Office of Management and Budget the term earmark referred to,^[8]

In 2015, for the purpose of clause 9(e) of rule XXI restricting certain bills in the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 114th Congress, Congressional earmarks were defined as,^[9]{{rp|36}} {{quote|"a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, or Senator providing, authorizing or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority, or other spending authority for a contract, loan, loan guarantee, grant, loan authority, or other expenditure with or to an entity, or targeted to a specific State, locality or Congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formula-driven or competitive award process."|Clerk of the House of Representatives January 15, 2015}} The House Rules impose disclosure requirements for earmarks, while a standing rule of the Republican Conference has, since the 114th Congress, imposed an "earmark moratorium".^[10]{{rp|1}}

Typically, a legislator seeks to insert earmarks that direct a specified amount of money to a particular organization or project in their home state or district.

Appropriation committees

The two most powerful Congressional committees, the Senate Committee on Appropriations and the House Committee on Appropriations, pass bills that regulate expenditures the United States federal government.^[11]

President Obama proposed freezing discretionary spending representing approximately 12% of the budget in his 2011 State of the Union address.^[15]

Value

Based on the 2006 CRS report the comparative total value of earmarks from 1994 to 2005 was,^[16]{{rp|18}}

Earmarks as a % of total federal outlay.^[16]{{rp|19}}

Legislation

The Congress is required by Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution to pass legislation prior to the expenditure of any U.S. Treasury funds.^[17]

The earmarking process provided Congress with the power to earmark discretionary funds it appropriates to be spent on specific named projects. The earmarking process was a regular part of the process of allocating funds within the Federal government. For many years they were a core aspect of legislative policymaking and distributive politics - an essential political instrument whereby political coalitions were forged through compromise in order to pass or reject key legislation. As congressional earmarks came into disfavor and eventually were prohibited, the ban "contributed to legislative gridlock and increased the difficulty of winning enactment of tax and immigration reform."^[18][25][19]

Earmarking differs from the broader appropriations process in which Congress grants a yearly lump sum of money to a federal agency. These monies are allocated by the agency according to its legal authority and internal budgeting process. With an earmark, Congress directs a specified amount of money from an agency's budget to be spent on a particular project. In the past members of Congress did not have to identify themselves or the project.

The process of earmarking was substantially reformed since the 110th United States Congress between January 3, 2007, and January 3, 2009. Since 2009, members of Congress had to post all their earmark requests online along with a signed letter certifying that they and their immediate families had no direct financial interest in the earmark.^[20]

In March 2010, the House Appropriations Committee implemented rules to ban earmarks to for-profit corporations.^[21] According to The New York Times, approximately 1,000 such earmarks were authorized in the previous year, worth $1.7 billion.^[22] At the time, earmarks constituted less than 1% of the 2010 federal budget, down from about 1.1% in 2006.^[21]

After gaining control of the House in 2011 (following the 2010 elections), Republicans adopted a House earmark ban. This was controversial within the House Republican Conference, which had internal debates several times over whether to partially lift the ban.^{[23][24][25][26]} The earmark ban is contained in the House Republicans' intraparty rules (not the House rules).^[27]

President Obama promised during his State of the Union address in January 2011 to veto any bill that contained earmarks. In February 2011, Congress "imposed a temporary ban on earmarks, money for projects that individual lawmakers slip into major Congressional budget bills to cater to local demands."^[28]

In December 2015, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), claimed in their 2016 Congressional Pig Book,^[29] that all the FY2016 earmarks were contained in the December 2016 omnibus 2000-page Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 which authorized $1.15 trillion in appropriations.^[30] The CAGW argued that "Throwing all earmarks into one large bill makes it more difficult to identify and eliminate earmarks than if Congress adhered to regular order and considered the 12 appropriations bills individually."

Alternatives to congressional earmarks

Members of Congress can influence priorities and policy-making that promote projects that are important to their constituents by accessing discretionary DOT spending, through regular formula-based funding mechanisms and increased interaction with both transportation official as the federal and state levels.^[5]{{rp|9}}

Earmarks and transportation

In January 2017, a report by the CRS described how, prior to the earmarks ban in 2011, Members of Congress had used earmarks to ensure that local congressional representatives, not the Department of Transportation and its Agencies Administration, set priority discretionary transportation spending.^[5]{{rp|9}}

Congressional members and DOT administration often disagree on priorities. In FY2007, with an earmark ban in place, President Bush's Administration's divided about $850 million, which represented almost all of the DOT's discretionary annual funding, to traffic congestion mitigation strategies in only five metro areas, Miami, Florida, Minneapolis, Minnesota, San Francisco, California, and Seattle, Washington through the Urban Partnership Agreement.^[5]{{rp|9}}^[31]{{rp|3,4}}

Debates

Earmarks have often been treated as being synonymous with "pork barrel" legislation.^[32] Despite considerable overlap,^[33] the two are not the same: what constitutes an earmark is an objective determination, while what is "pork-barrel" spending is subjective.^[34] One legislator's "pork" is another's vital project.^[35][36]

Scott Frisch and Sean Kelly point out that directing money to particular purposes is a core constitutional function of Congress. If Congress does not make a specific allocation, the task falls to the executive branch. There is no guarantee that the allocation made by executive agencies will be superior to that of Congress. Presidents and executive officials can use the allocation of spending to reward friends and punish enemies.

^[37]{{Page needed|date=November 2010}}

There are also those who opine that "earmarks are good" because they are more democratic and less bureaucratic than traditional appropriation spending, which generally is not tailored to specific projects.^[38]

In popular culture

The Gravina Island Bridge, popularly known as the "Bridge to Nowhere", has become shorthand for frivolous earmarks.^[39]

South Africa

In 2010, National Treasury Republic of South Africa explored earmarking,^[40] along with recycling and tax shifting, as ways of using carbon tax revenues. While the Treasury did "not support full earmarking of revenues generated from environmental taxes" they were considering "partial 'on-budget' earmarking of some revenue. At that time concerns were raised that special interest groups could constrain government and control public resources through earmarking.^[40]{{rp|8}}

See also

• Expenditures in the United States federal budget
• Mandatory spending
• Appropriations bill (United States)
• Congressional Research Service
• Citizens Against Government Waste
• Client politics
• Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006
• Lobbying
• Spoils system
• Bridge to nowhere

References

External links

• Earmarks Database from the Office of Management and Budget Last updated in 2011
• Seattle Times Database of Congressional Earmarks 2008

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