Earmarks By Any Name Are Still Earmarks

Senator Mike Johanns

As if the Congressional approval rating isn't low enough, the Senate, after swearing off earmarks and carve-outs, is now considering a bill containing an earmark. It's not obvious at first glance, but if you dig through the legislative text of the highway bill currently being considered, you'll find a provision which clearly falls under the definition of an earmark as outlined by Rule 44 in the Standing Rules of the Senate. Because of the Senate's no-earmark pledge, along with President Obama's promise to veto any bill with earmarks, the Senate should demand this bill be changed. I've introduced an amendment which would strip the earmark.
Here's what the provision in question does. First, it identifies a very specific section (an old earmark, as it happens) from the 2005 highway bill. This provision is so specific that we know it applies solely to an earmark to fund the Nevada portion of a Maglev rail project from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. That project has since proven so expensive that even the addition of an earmark could not get the project off the ground. Taxpayer dollars appropriated for the earmark – $45 million – have sat unspent for years. The highway bill currently before us explicitly identifies this money and gives it to "such state" as was identified previously – in this case, Nevada.
According to the Senate rules, that's an earmark. The provision directs a specific amount of funding to a specific state, by rescinding an old earmark. Instead of returning the taxpayer money to the federal Treasury, the provision spends it through a new earmark, directed once again to Nevada.
Some claim this provision isn't an earmark because it's not "new spending." This argument cannot hold. For one, the Senate's definition of an earmark does not mention anything about "new" spending. Second, accepting this argument means that any member could delete wasteful spending programs and send the money to pet projects without acknowledging that the provision is in fact an earmark. Furthermore, because President Obama has vowed to veto any bill containing an earmark, this provision must be stripped for the bill as a whole to have any chance of becoming law.
The year I arrived in the Senate, 2009, I took a stand against earmarks. I believed then, as I do now, that the earmark process lacks openness and transparency. Earmarks are often used to entice members of Congress to vote for legislation they might otherwise reject as irresponsible. In an age of trillion dollar annual deficits and a $15 trillion national debt, it is unacceptable to use taxpayer dollars as bargaining chips. The federal government is borrowing 42 cents of every dollar spent and should not borrow more to give the state of Nevada a gift no other state will receive. This provision slipped into the highway bill is a perfect example of the preferential treatment of tax dollars which led to the Senate earmark moratorium and the President's pledge to veto them.
I will continue the push to get my amendment passed, and I encourage my colleagues to cosponsor it. We owe an earmark-free bill to the American people.