(Washington, D.C.) – Today, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) expressed its enthusiastic support for S. 1930, the Earmark Elimination Act of 2011, introduced yesterday by Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).  The act, which would redefine earmarks as any congressionally-directed spending item, tax benefit, or tariff benefit, attempts to permanently eliminate earmarks and thwart the efforts of members of Congress who have subverted the earmark moratorium rules adopted by the House and Senate in January 2011. 

The budget appropriations process for fiscal year (FY) 2012 was supposed to be entirely earmark-free, but CCAGW has discovered 251 projects worth $9.6 billion that represent either an entirely new spending item or a substantial increase over the President’s request, thus meeting the long-standing Congressional Pig Book definition of an earmark.  CCAGW has analyzed 16 appropriations bills, and 12 contain earmarks.  The “porkiest” was for the Department of Defense, which had 72 projects worth $3.9 billion in the House and 49 projects worth $2.9 billion in the Senate.  Many of the projects in the 16 bills would qualify as earmarks under S. 1930.

In addition to continuing to fund earmarks, members of Congress have drastically reduced transparency.  For several years prior to FY 2008, most earmarks were contained in a single table, which usually included the account that would fund the earmark and the city or state where the project was located.  From FYs 2008-2010, members were also required to attach their names to their earmark requests, and submit accompanying certification letters.  Now, the projects are no longer contained in a separate location apart from the text of the bill, and it is far more difficult to expose them. 

“Eliminating earmarks is a cause that CCAGW has championed since 1984,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz, “and we were hopeful to have put earmarks to bed when the moratorium was adopted.  However, any serious analysis of the FY 2012 appropriations bills reveals that the death knell of pork-barrel spending was sounded prematurely.  S. 1930 will go a long way toward truly eliminating earmarks, which every member of Congress should recognize as a wasteful, unnecessary part of the budget process.  If the bill is enacted, taxpayers can rest assured that CCAGW will still be on the lookout for pork, monitoring how members of Congress may attempt to circumvent the new law through ‘phonemarking’ or other underhanded techniques, and reporting their transgressions.”

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.