Why Earmarking is a Pork-barrel Political Issue

The issue of pork-barrel politics, or as its more formally know, earmarking has been a conflict on the foreground of political discussions for much of the more contemporary legislative issues. Earmarking is the allocations of government funds and resources provided by congress for grants, projects or programs for specific districts within the states (Earmarks, 2011). Special money may be set aside for different projects in a given district, such as new bridge or highway construction, grants for small businesses, or some sort of locally run government office. Many in congress have varied opinions on the necessity and benefit these pork spending’s actually have on the economy. While some would say that earmarking is a helpful tool used to get additional funding for small districts, other, more liberal congressmen would disagree, saying they are a corruption that needs to be stopped. One senator even went as far to say that “earmarked funding for special projects promotes waste, big-spending, and corruption of the system” (Friel, 2010).

Although there are many differing opinions on earmarking, the numbers do not seem to lie. Supporters of pork spending offer the argument that “you don’t save anything by cutting earmarks”, stating that nonelected bureaucrats are the ones really calling the shots on big-spending (Friel, 2010). Other devotees may say that earmarking can help to spread government spending to more local projects nationwide, instead of a few larger, more centralized ventures. But in all of the opinions of supporters, the voices of the opponents still have prevalent influence on the feelings of the public. Sen. George LeMieux of Florida offered a different perspective on earmarking when he said that “…Earmarks are, unfortunately, the engine that drives the train that gets us into these huge spending problems… so the earmark is what buys you into bigger spending (Friel, 2010).” What he is saying here is that by using earmarks, the government’s spending starts to slide down a slippery slope, where spending will become gradually bigger and bigger until there is a massive deficit on our hands. Spending becomes less responsible and it is harder to hold those at fault accountable.

In this politically complicated matter, the negative effects seem to outweigh the positive ones. The astonishing rise in pork projects from fewer that two thousand in the 1990’s, to over fourteen thousand in just 2005 (Cato, 2014), shows that congress obviously found something that they could use to their advantage, and ran with it at surprising rates. The main problem that is discussed in the talks of earmarking, is that of the federal government’s involvement in state and private issues. Many of the earmarks proposed tend to be grants of money allocations to private sectors, then taxpayer money goes to help that area. But when the payout comes back from that private company or group, the profits stay in the chain of business, and not invested back to the taxpayers or the government. So it does not make any sense for that regular tax paying citizens to be paying for something that will not affect them (Cato, 2014).

Earmarking, or pork-spending should be discontinued in our current state of government. If the spending keeps increasing at the exponential rate that that is seems to be growing, soon our national debt deficit will become too hard to manage, no one will be held accountable, and the regular citizen will be lost in a complex government struggle of power gain and loss (Rauch, 2009). The people that we elected to represent our interests will no longer keep in mind the needs and wants of the people as a whole, but more what is important for their districts. To them, if that means having to bend on some of the platforms under which they may have been elected, then so be it, and the political integrity of an already shaky system, threatens to be brought down on the heads of those in power.