When it comes to the federal budget, the president proposes and Congress disposes, using their constitutional power of the purse to redirect funding from the president’s budget to their own priorities. In the case of DoD, the services’ submit their validated funding requirements, which are in turn as vetted by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The president’s staff further vets the requirements and resources against their understanding of the national strategic environment before providing the PresBud to the House and Senate armed services committees, which will be voted on by each of the separate bills issued out of committee before being subjected to bicameral reconciliation.
Which is where the fun begins:
Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.
Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.
While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.
Earmarks in the DoD budget are nothing new, it’s the largest source of discretionary funding that must be authorized each year, and a principal source of congressional leverage. But it’s one thing for Congress to deliver its own judgment on DoD budget priorities and determine that the nation needs fewer tanks and more infantry, for example and quite another thing to re-purpose operating accounts from warfighter needs to museums and “educational institutes” that memorialize a deceased senator and something else entirely to do so when the armed forces are attempting to fight and win two of the nation’s wars.
I guess there wasn’t quite enough pork in last spring’s $780 billion “stimulus” bill.
Disgusting.
Just disgusting.
Maybe we can get earmarks in the Farm bill to build ships?
Well, as a denizen of New Oleans (tho temp AWOL) I can say the WWII Museum is a worthy project, but out of the DOD budget? Would’ve been EVEN EASIER to justify under the “stimulus” bill as the N.O area is still suffering deeply from Katrina and both the construction jobs and subsequent tourist dollars that follow are sorely needed. But, no, THAT would have taken stimulus $ away from ACORN in New Orleans. ACORN doesn’t sully it’s hands doing skilled construction work. Besides, crane operators working for my frat. brother Freddy Grillettas’ B & G crane Co. are to busy to sign up grave-yards and cartoon characters on the voter rolls. No, far better to take the $ away from something that shoots–oooh, things like that are superdoublebad (or doubleUNbad if one takes today’s lexicon as meaning “bad” is “smookin’ good.” ) in Obama world.
And something like the museum can also be justified in both helping recruiting in the armed services by creating a favorable image of the institution and its’ members and the sacrifices they’ve made for our country.And God knows, our national illiteracy/amnesia about American history is dismal enough to contemplate, so anything helps.
But a boondoggle for Kennedy–out of the services’ hide–to memorialize a man who fought military appropriations of almost ANY kind tooth and nail? Talk about adding insult to injury! Disgusting. Sickening enough to make even the proverbial Jackal wretch!
Get back to your duty station Trooper!
Heard a funny replay of a campaign speech from Obama today railing as how, in his administration, no Congressmen were going to load up bills with special interest earmarks as he would have the most transparent and open government in history, yada, yada, yada….
‘Twas played today as backdrop to discussion of the transparent creation of the Health Care legislation being played out behind Senator Reid’s less than open door….
And people actually believed that BS and voted for this change….
Constitutional Convention – term limits, reinforce the tenth amendment, line item veto…
It might be the only way.
I think we’re missing a key point about earmarks. If the Congress through its committees put the WWII Museum and the educational system into the bill then debated, voted, and approved those appropriations, then that’s the way the process is designed. Unfortunately, many, if not all, earmarks are put into the bill after the committees have approved the bill and the input is directed by the Congressman or Senator (or even worse, their staffer) alone. No debate, no discussion, no quid pro quo, nothing. And the worst part is the budgeting body, in this case DOD, knows this is going to happen, so they prepare their budgets with an additional padding, thereby inflating the budget as a whole. 2 years in the Northern Virginia Penitentiary for Wayward Fighter Pilots showed this process as the norm not the exception and was enough for me to put in my papers.
“Earmarks Redux”, indeed. Isn’t that the problem? It’s redux after redux after redux.
What will it take to get these appropriations debated and voted upon in the proper way? It’ll most likely never happen! Why do we put up with this? The only solution is to exact a promise from each elected Congressman/woman… and then we’re subject to their whims and the smell of money in the air!
To paraphrase …
NO BLOOD FOR PORK!
SNAFU! With the the district of corruption, how could it be otherwise boychik?
A real leader would have threatened to veto and sent it back until the BS was cleaned out.