The Ant In The Room

For the last few years there has been great chatter in the political world about congressional "earmarks." Many a politician has appeared before a television camera and a microphone, thumped his chest, and delivered a message about how he opposes the use of earmarks, and telling us just how dastardly these little buggers are. The interesting thing is, often, but not always, when that same politician's record is examined, it is found that he/she has used earmarks more than some people shower. (Sniff, sniff......ahh, I'll be right back.) In fact, it has not been out of the question for that person to have earmarks in legislation at the same time they are appearing before the television cameras, telling Americans how much they oppose them. The other day, a Republican senator was doing a television interview. He said how bad earmarks are and that funding the government would not go forward until earmarks were removed from any appropriations. The interviewer than asked him, "If earmarks are so bad, why do you have one in the current bill before Congress?" He didn't know what to say, so he did the "Washington Shuffle," and said as little as possible, but came back to his point about how bad earmarks are. That brought the questioner back to why he had an earmark in the current bill. He then at least tried to justify the earmark (I don't remember the actual item he had inserted into the bill). You can't have this stuff both ways; "I'm against these terrible things, except when they're for my constituents." He got caught!

How many of you know what an earmark is? I'll bet not many can answer that, except that for all of the "noise" about them in recent years, you are supposed to be against them. While a true definition has not be agreed upon, essentially earmarks are specific items inserted into appropriations legislation that are not debated or even given scrutiny during the legislative process. Okay, what the hell does that mean? (Just an example) Your congressperson wants to get money allocated for a new (federal) courthouse in his/her district. He/she gets with your state's two senators* to get their support for the project. The money for the new courthouse is inserted into an appropriation bill, and if the legislation passes, that money is now specifically designated to go to the building of that new courthouse. The merits of the new courthouse are not debated.**

The thing about "earmarks" is, the individual projects are not all necessarily wrong or wasteful spending, as has often been portrayed by some politicians or some commentators. Perhaps the existing courthouse is in such bad repair, that a new courthouse is really needed. The problem with earmarks is, they do not face the light of day during the legislative process. On the other side of the coin, that courthouse may not really be needed, and the representative (and senator or senators) are just trying to help their re-election chances, or help building contractors and building trades in their district, maybe even as sort of a "payoff" for campaign contributions.***

Now, another thing: Just this past week, there was an appropriations bill before Congress totaling well over a trillion dollars (it was to fund several departments). Of that amount, eight billion was in earmarks by both Democrats and Republicans (including by the Republican senator mentioned above). Now, I'm not here to defend "earmarks," as I believe they should be publicly debated, but with the clamor raised by Republicans over this bill, one might have thought this would all wipe out the federal budget deficit. While all projects need the light of day, the hub bub over the eight billion out of more than a trillion is pure political theater by the Republicans, some of whom had earmarks in THIS VERY BILL! Throughout this past election campaign, Republican candidates had every chance to be specific about the things they would cut in order to reduce the federal deficit. Few took that challenge, preferring to rely upon the standard "Waste, fraud, and abuse," and of course, "earmarks!" So "earmarks" have been used to build a mountain out of a molehill. (To be fair, Democrats weren't much better.) Imagine this: There are a million killer bees in your house, but Randy shouts, "Look...an ant!" (A Word History is below the notes)

* As I noted, this is just an example, and both senators may not even agree to insertion of the earmark into the legislation, but it sure helps to have at least one of the state's senators on board.

** Typically, Congress appropriates money to the various departments of the government and those departments and their lower level departments decide how the money will be spent. With earmarks, that whole process is circumvented, since the earmarked project is specifically mentioned in the enacted legislation, it is the law that the specific amount go to that project.

*** New projects obviously mean jobs for workers and money for business people, but that isn't necessarily bad either, it all depends upon the validity of the project.

WORD HISTORY:
Ear-This word for a common body part (the "ear" as in "ear of corn" does not have the same origin, so while spelled the same in modern times, it is not the same word) goes back to the Indo European root "aus/ous," which may have had the notion of "perception," rather than specifically "ear," as some Indo European languages related to English further down the family tree have words derived from this root that pertain to "perception," although one source says it meant "ear." This root gave Old Germanic "auzon," which then gave Anglo-Saxon "eare," which later became "ere," before the modern spelling. Relatives of "ear" are widespread in the Germanic languages: German has "Ohr," Low Saxon German has "Ohr," Dutch has "oor," Frisian has "ear," Norwegian and Danish have "øre," Swedish has "öra," and Icelandic has "eyra." At this time, I am not exactly sure why the Germanic languages all have an "r" in them, although Gothic, an old Germanic dialect/language that has now died out, had "auso," which is close to the original Old Germanic "auzon."