Statement Supporting Re-Empowering Legislators’ Authority to Direct Spending

We the undersigned individuals write in support of Congress re-empowering its legislators to direct federal spending toward worthy projects in their home districts and states. This practice of legislative-directed spending, often termed “earmarking,” is as old as the Republic and should be restored with strong safeguards to protect the integrity of the process.

For more than a decade, Congress has had an earmark moratorium in place. This policy was enacted in reaction to well-publicized incidents of scandal and abuse related to earmarking and at a moment of fiscal crisis that focused national attention on deficit spending and debt. The purpose was to end a practice that was popularly understood to occasion corruption and wasteful spending.

However well-intentioned, the earmark moratorium has had real shortcomings. As various observers have noted, forbidding earmarks has shifted Congress’s constitutional spending authority to anonymous bureaucrats in executive branch agencies, who are not directly accountable to the public. It also has not reduced federal spending. Troublingly, the earmark moratorium has encouraged legislators to attempt to direct spending through the secretive practices of lettermarking and phonemarking, wherein lawmakers write to and call executive branch agencies to advocate for favorable treatment.

Most critically, the earmark moratorium deprived members of the opportunity to provide input on how appropriations bills funded projects in their communities. As a result, members lacked a stake in these bills, weakening Congress’s capacity to coalesce majorities to enact legislation, a constitutional duty of both the House and Senate. This has meant more legislative gridlock and encouraged chamber leaders to ball up appropriations bills into massive omnibus legislation that gets rushed through both chambers, with no time for individual members or the public to read the bill before the vote. For Congress to return to a more transparent regular order in the appropriations process, legislators must have a real stake in the process.

Both chambers can start that process by revisiting the failed earmark moratorium and creating a new means to enable legislators to help their constituents. It is our view that a new process for requesting directed spending should be transparent from initiation to conclusion and be subsequently audited to ensure funds are not wasted or misused. Access to directed spending should be made more equitable to legislators; senior members of the chamber too often have received a disproportionate share of earmarks. Finally, a new system of earmarks should contain prohibitions—such as forbidding earmarks to flow to private corporations—that prevent quid pro quos between legislators and campaign donors.

We are thus encouraged by reports that a new process will have these safeguards in place, along with two other safeguards:

• Strict conflict-of-interest rules requiring members to certify that members and their spouses and immediate family have no financial interest in the project and
• A requirement for demonstrated community support and matching funds from nongovernment entities.

All told, this amounts to a significant improvement over the earlier approach to earmarks. This new approach to district spending represents an unprecedented model of transparency and accountability.

For certain, this is not magic pixie dust that will fix everything. Nonetheless, it is an important first step to achieving a more functional first branch of government and helping lawmakers better serve their constituents and fulfill their constitutional duties.

Lee Drutman, New America*

Kevin R. Kosar, American Enterprise Institute*

This list was last updated on 3/2/21 at 4:00 p.m. ET.

David Barker, American University*

Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University*

Matthew Chervenak, Sunwater Institute*

Michael Crespin, University of Oklahoma*

Jesse Crosson, Trinity University*

Zachary Courser, Claremont McKenna College*

Diana Evans, Trinity College*

E.J. Fagan, University of Illinois at Chicago*

Scott Frisch, California State University Channel Islands*

Alexander Furnas, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University*

Laurel Harbridge-Yong, Northwestern University*

John Hudak, Brookings Institution*

Bryan D. Jones, University of Texas at Austin*

Lorelei Kelly, Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University*

Gregory Koger, University of Miami*

Jim Kolbe, former member of Congress*

Katherine Krimmel, Columbia University*

Tim LaPira, James Madison University*

Jeffrey Lewis Lazarus, Georgia State University*

Geoffrey Lorenz, University of Nebraska-Lincoln*

Anthony J. Madonna, University of Georgia*

Jane Mansbridge, Harvard Kennedy School*

Kathryn Pearson, University of Minnesota*

John J. Pitney, Claremont McKenna College*

Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution*

John Richter, Bipartisan Policy Center*

Jason M. Roberts, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill*

Ruth Bloch Rubin, University of Chicago*

Eric Schickler, University of California at Berkeley*

Richard Shapiro, Strategic Assets Consulting*

Colleen Shogan, Georgetown University*

Gisela Sin, University of Illinois*

Sean M. Theriault, University of Texas at Austin*

Michael Thorning, Bipartisan Policy Center*

Jennifer Nicoll Victor, George Mason University*

Craig Volden, University of Virginia*

John D. Wilkerson, University of Washington*

Alan E. Wiseman, Vanderbilt University*

Samuel Workman, University of Oklahoma*

Franz Wuerfmannsdobler, Bipartisan Policy Center*

*Individual is signing in his or her personal capacity.