[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 100 (Thursday, June 13, 2024)]
[House]
[Page H3983]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE CASE AGAINST EARMARKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, Citizens Against Government Waste has 
released its ``2024 Congressional Pig Book,'' documenting the fiscal 
rot that is taking place with congressional earmarks.
  CAGW documents 8,222 congressional earmarks in last year's 
appropriations bills. That is up more than 11 percent in a single year, 
costing taxpayers $22.7 billion, the fifth highest amount of earmark 
spending since CAGW began tracking it in 1991.
  I thank Tom Schatz and his staff for continuing to shine the light on 
one of Congress' most tawdry and wasteful practices, in which 
individual Congressmen bypass merit-driven competition and instead 
personally direct spending to pet projects in their own districts or to 
favored supporters.
  CAGW notes that ``Earmarks continue to provide the most benefit to 
the most powerful legislators. In fiscal year 2024, the 90 members of 
the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, making up only 17 
percent of the Congress, were responsible for 42.2 percent of the 
earmarks and 35.2 percent of the money.'' One House Appropriations 
member grabbed 13 earmarks, costing taxpayers a quarter of a billion 
dollars.
  Although all spending bills start in the House, and the voters 
elected a Republican House for that reason, Democrats received three-
quarters of the earmarks, 8,571 to the Republicans 2,931. They are all 
bad, though.
  Since the Magna Carta, it has been a settled principle of good 
governance that the power to spend money should be separate from the 
power to appropriate it. That is at the heart of our constitutional 
separation of powers: The President spends money but cannot appropriate 
it, and Congress appropriates money but cannot spend it.

                              {time}  1100

  Earmarks combine these two powers, and the inevitable result is 
waste, logrolling, porkbarrel spending, and, ultimately, corruption. It 
is no coincidence that so many of the congressional scandals involving 
political corruption or laughably absurd projects are the result of 
earmarks.
  Worthy projects in open competitive bidding don't need earmarks. They 
rise or fall on their own merits. If there is such a thing as a good 
earmark, the price to be paid is all of the bad ones, and that is a 
high price, indeed.
  Members can and should advocate for their districts and make the case 
for projects they deem worthy of the money that Congress has 
appropriated. The problem with earmarks is blurring these two roles and 
having individual Members both advocate and decide.
  Many say they don't trust this President and his deputies to 
administer these funds appropriately and evenhandedly, and I share that 
sentiment. If you don't trust the President to administer the funds 
that we appropriate, then don't give him the money.
  We hear that earmarks simply ensure that local governments get a fair 
break. No. What they actually do is turn the Federal budget into a grab 
bag for local pork spending by the most powerful Members of Congress 
and undermine the central tenet of federalism that local projects 
should be financed by local communities and Federal spending reserved 
for the Nation's general welfare.
  When a local government proposes an earmark, what is it saying? It is 
saying the project is so low on its priority list that they don't dare 
spend their own taxpayers' money. Yet, they are perfectly happy to have 
taxpayers in other communities foot the bill.
  The result is a long list of dubious projects that rob St. Petersburg 
to pay St. Paul for projects that St. Petersburg doesn't benefit from 
and that St. Paul doesn't deem worthy enough to spend its own money on.
  Finally, it is said that earmarks can grease legislation by buying 
off the votes of individual Members. Add a few local projects for that 
Member, and suddenly, a bill he would never vote for on its merits 
becomes a local imperative, overriding his sound judgment. Explain to 
me exactly how that is a good thing.
  Paying interest on the national debt now exceeds our entire defense 
spending for the first time in our history, and history warns us that 
countries that bankrupt themselves aren't around very long. If we are 
going to avoid the terrible fate of so many nations before ours, we 
have to end congressional profligacy, and earmarks are the most glaring 
example of that waste.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Citizens Against Government Waste for continuing 
to expose the excesses and inequities of earmarks and to hold 
accountable those politicians from both parties who are responsible.

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