Throwing the First Stone

When the Newt Gingrich Republicans took over Congress, they vastly expanded the system of federal spending where individual representatives can dictate exactly what the money is spent on. The common term for this is “earmarks”. The Associated Press reports that earmarks went from more than 1,300 projects worth nearly $8 billion in 1994 to a peak of nearly 14,000 projects worth more than $27 billion in 2005, the last year the Republicans were in power.

Some don’t see a problem. Democrat Nancy Boyda is quoted as saying, “Representatives can better judge their districts’ needs than some bureaucrat.”

Maybe. That sounds good at first, but then you start to read about the abuse of the system. The “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska was an earmark.

Gingrich established the system to cement the new Republican majority in place by giving them a way to connect back to their districts in a real, financial way. I know a few of those “bureaucrats” in Zion Park. Quite frankly, I think Boyda is wrong. I think that the people I know will do a better job. They’re professionals. They know what needs doing.

Only Congress gets a worse grade than Bush in the polls. So why don’t we throw the bums out more often? Gingrich was right. The ability to reward people with earmarks is one thing that keeps the same people going back, election after election.

The news snacks that we get in newspapers and on TV don’t give you the details, however. The Democratic congress that was elected in 2006 is still mainlining earmarks (down to 11,000 from the 14,000 under the Republicans) but they did do one thing right. They passed a law so we can see who is doing what more clearly. Organizations like the Sunlight Foundation have made that information available to all of us.

I decided to check their records for earmarks here in Color Country. Here’s what they report for 2007.

$500,000.00 Montezuma Creek UT
Utah Navajo Health System
 for facilities and equipment

$350,000.00 St. George UT
Washington County School District
 for its Family Focus family literacy project

$300,000.00 West Valley City UT
Community Education Partnership
 for math, science, and reading programs

$275,000.00 Wellsville UT
American West Heritage
 for Lifelong Learning Initiative

$200,000.00 Logan UT
Logan City School District
 for the sixth grade reading assistance project

$200,000.00 Orem UT
Orem Public Library for technology upgrades

$150,000.00 Ogden UT
Ogden City School District
 for the Ogden Telepresence-Enabled Academic Mentoring project

$150,000.00 Orem UT
Utah Valley State College Center
 for the Study of Ethics for the Democracy and Justice Project

$75,000.00 East Carbon UT
Carbon Medical Service Association
 for facilities and equipment

$45,000.00 Green River UT
Green River Medical Center
 for facilities and equipment

$30,000.00 Enterprise UT
Enterprise Valley Medical Clinic
 for facilities and equipment

These ’seem’ like worthy projects, but what do I know? One think I know is I’d rather get our congressmen out of the business of personally micro-managing the federal budget. Color Country isn’t even getting our share. Six states get over $120 per person in earmarked funding. Color Country only gets half that.

If you want to play with the numbers yourself, you can download an Excel spreadsheet of the 2007 earmarks at:

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/exposingearmarks

Another reason to vote against anybody who is now in office.

—————

ps … I deleted one item from the Sunlight Foundation list for Utah above because it was listed as being for “Overton County”. There is no Overton County in Utah. A little research showed that it was mislabeled and is actually in Tennessee.