Mississippi's U.S. Sens. Cochran and Wicker, whipped to a fury by Republican deficit hawks, have committed themselves to the idea of no longer sending earmark money back to their home state.
The issue with earmarks is easy to dismiss: They account for less than 1 percent of the federal budget, and they contain money that's already been allocated by the federal treasury, and won't go back into the treasury if unclaimed. Abruptly abandoning the use of earmarks allows other states—with legislators not committed to the ban—to sop up the money our group leave lying on the floor.
But earmarks are also easy to attack. Only recently, Congress passed a law demanding politicians attach their names to earmark funds they've requested in appropriation bills. Prior to that, it wasn't so easy to determine who was begging for money to build a toxic-waste dump or fund corporate tax breaks. At the least, dispensing with earmarks may improve the chances of vetting numerous "bridges to nowhere" if the funding must be debated in a committee process.
Life without earmarks will create a different world for some lawmakers. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., told reporters this month that he was supporting the moratorium, but would be working with the president to make sure that his state was still able to get federal funding for highways, bridges and universities.
Udall is a Democrat. Wicker and Cochran, on the other hand, are on a team that has made clear that it values Obama failing as a president above almost anything else, so there's no reason for the president to make nice with them.
Jim Harper, director of Information Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, told the Washington Independent this month that getting rid of earmarks means legislators will have to adopt a more nationally based outlook on funding. He said it's time for legislators to start saying, "any community with these particular needs should get funding, not just my community should get this project."
Those are easy words to say in a state with a dense population and a high number of representatives looking out for it. Southern states with our low populations and numbers of representatives may suffer in this kind of process.
The problem with earmarks is that we have a system that is fairly dependent upon them. We'll soon find out just how dependent over the next couple of budget years if our delegation doesn't find alternative ways to fund local projects.
We need more than a vocal opt-in oath to no longer use earmarks. That's as uninspiring as demanding a reduction in the deficit while pushing to extend a tax cut for the top 2 percent of wage-earners—adding an extra $700 billion to the deficit by all accounts.
What we need is a whole new system that allows a more seemly means to get local funding. This will take considerably more work and less partisanship. We'll be watching your progress, senators.
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