By Paige Winfield Cunningham
Virginia Republicans abided by a GOP ban on earmarks coming from Congress this year, while a handful of their colleagues strayed.
Last March, House Republicans passed a year-long ban on all earmarking — money within appropriations bills aimed for specific programs, states or localities. That ban will now extend to Democrats as well, after the GOP gained the majority in November and announced another moratorium for fiscal year 2012.
But not all Republicans went along with the party’s ban. Among the four lawmakers who still requested earmarks was, notably, long-time Libertarian favorite Ron Paul of Texas. Anh Cao of Louisiana, Don Young of Alaska and Henry Brown of South Carolina also asked for earmarks.
Differing views of earmarks even within the party show how contentious the practice has become in recent years. Opponents slam earmarking as wasteful use of government money while defenders say it’s a useful way to channel money that’s going to be spent anyway.
Even though earmarks just designate money that’s already headed out of Washington, Rep. Rob Wittman said the GOP ban did have a positive impact—by reducing earmark requests by 40 percent over last year.
“So if every request was funded, there would be a reduction,” Wittman said. “So there actually was an effect.”
But legislators routinely apply for many more earmarks than are actually funded.
While actual earmark awards have hovered around $16 billion in recent years, senators and representatives from both parties have asked this year for 39,294 earmarks worth $131 billion, according to a new database developed by the nonprofit groups Taxpayers Against Earmarks, Taxpayers for Common Sense and WashingtonWatch.com.
