Congress Appears to Be Trying to Get Around Earmark Ban - Things may be getting complicated on the Savannah Port

From The New York Times:

Members of Congress may no longer be able to direct federal money to projects back home because of a moratorium on legislative earmarks, but that has not stopped them from trying.

A coalition of budget watchdog groups says that in the absence of the age-old practice of Congressional earmarks, the legislative tools that let members attach pet projects to bills, lawmakers appear to have found a backdoor method: special funds in spending and authorization bills that allow them to direct money to projects in their states.

“We thought we’d gotten rid of earmarks,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group in Washington that is part of the coalition. “But it looks like Congress has just moved on to other methods that are less transparent than the old way, like creating these slush funds.”

The latest example, the groups say, is the recently passed budget for the Army Corps of Engineers. Budget documents show that Congress included 26 different funds — totaling $507 million — for the corps to spend on various construction, maintenance and other projects that were not included in President Obama’s budget or the final spending bill.

The funds were financed by reducing money for projects included in the president’s budget request and adding $375 million to the corps budget, documents show.

Congress also gave the corps criteria to use in selecting projects and instructed it to report within 45 days about how it intends to spend the money from the funds, according to the budget documents. On Monday, the corps will release the list of projects it plans to finance.

The watchdog groups — which include the conservative National Taxpayers Union and Americans for Tax Reform, led by the antitax activist Grover Norquist — note that the 26 new corps funds add up to nearly the same amount as the earmarks in the 2010 budget. The funds are listed in the House and Senate joint report that accompanies the spending bill, but they are not in the text of the bill, one of the ways Congress used to add earmarks.

Critics say the special funds in the corps budget are the latest example of members of Congress trying to circumvent the earmark ban to funnel money to their districts, in the form of corps engineering projects. In the absence of earmarks, lawmakers have tried pressing agencies for money or in some cases threatened to tie up Congress if projects are not financed.

For example, in 2010, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, threatened to block Obama administration appointments unless money was provided for a harbor dredging project in his home state.

Will Hollier, a lobbyist and former Congressional staff member, said the financing maneuver used for the Army Corps might simply be Congress’s way of adjusting to the new realities in Washington.

  

“I think Congress is now starting to see that they simply can’t give up their responsibilities and leave everything to the administration,” Mr. Hollier said. “It’s their way of trying to be relevant in the post-earmark era.”

Last year, the House Armed Services Committee created a $1 billion special fund in the defense authorization bill that allowed members to add amendments that directed money to projects in their districts. Lawmakers said the amendments were not earmarks because recipients would have to compete for the money.

But a report by the staff of Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, found that 115 of the 225 amendments added had previously been earmarks. Several of the amendments were added by freshman Republicans who had campaigned against earmarks. The fund was heavily criticized, and the amendments were stripped from the bill after a public outcry.