'Earmarks' bogging down Congress, Obama

WASHINGTON - Running for president, Barack Obama famously paraphrased William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried," Obama said. "It isn't even past."

In the latest proof that the past can be hard to shake, the White House finds itself mired in a year-old battle over pork-barrel spending, including more than $313 million in Minnesota projects.

The federal largesse -- ranging from $240,000 to renovate the Shubert Theatre in Minneapolis to $27 million for a regional water system in southern Minnesota -- has become the focal point of a concerted GOP assault on government outlays under Obama, including a $7.7 billion pile of earmarks that he inherited from last year's budget fight.

"It's a fight worth having," Arizona Sen. John McCain said last week in a denunciation of earmarks. "So much for change."

In the thick of the dust-up are two anti-earmark Republicans from Minnesota: Reps. John Kline and Michele Bachmann, who have refused to put their names on any of the earmark spending contained in a larger bill, even though some of it will clearly benefit their districts.

'Out of whack'

"The system, as it has exploded out of control, is out of whack," said Kline, one of about three dozen lawmakers who have sworn off the practice of funneling extra money, or "pork," into home states and districts.

So ubiquitous are earmarks that she and Kline have seen them go to their districts when they didn't request them. One $950,000 earmark would upgrade the Interstate 35W/Hwy. 10 interchange in the northern Twin Cities suburbs, an area Bachmann represents. There's also a $1.9 million earmark, secured by Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, to replace the aging Hastings bridge, in the district represented by Kline.

Neither Kline nor Bachmann considers these projects wasteful. But both question the process by which they were procured, saying it has more to do with political muscle than public merit.

Still, both acknowledge that earmarking is a bipartisan habit, much like driving a little over the posted speed limit. Some Republican leaders rank among the top porkmeisters in the 2009 spending bill, which is still unfinished six months into the budget year that began in October.

So tardy is the bill, some earmark authors might not even be in Congress to see their spending kick in. Minnesota Republicans Norm Coleman, behind in the Senate recount battle, and former Rep. Jim Ramstad, who retired, accounted for more than $100 million in state earmarks, including money to fight HIV/AIDS and battle teen addiction.

'Mother of all earmarks'

Good or evil, even some earmark critics say it's not fair to tar Obama with the earmark brush, because most of this year's negotiations were left over from last year's Congress, before he took office. "It's not his bill," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, the group that brought to light the so-called Bridges to Nowhere, two Alaska projects that gave earmarks a bad name.

But what makes the pending $410 billion spending bill particularly uncomfortable for the White House is Obama's pledge, as a candidate, to go over earmarks "line by line." It's a goal he still sets for his presidency.

Critics say the list of 8,570 earmarks is too big for anyone to scrutinize properly. While they account for less than 2 percent of the vast spending bill, they provide the majority of the sparks in the congressional debate.

McCain, Obama's GOP foe in the presidential election, says that if Obama were serious about earmark reform, he would veto the whole package, much as President Bush threatened to do last fall. That would leave the federal government running at current spending levels.

But even if the bill cranks up domestic spending by 6.2 percent overall, it actually has $500 million less in earmarks than last year, which reformers like Ashdown see as progress.

The issue underscores the oddities of congressional appropriations, where members compete annually for pet projects -- most of them regional, but some national in scope.

Those who take earmarks say the debate is not really about how much money gets spent, but who allocates it: federal bureaucrats in Washington, or lawmakers who know their own districts.

"It adds nothing to the federal debt," said Rep. Tim Walz, a Mankato Democrat who runs as a fiscal conservative. Walz has his name on about $116 million in earmarks, from $323,000 for biomedical research facilities at the Hormel Institute in Austin to $8.6 million to improve the locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River.

Pumping up Walz's total, like that of other Minnesota members, are earmarks he signed onto that provide tens of millions of dollars for national reading and education programs.

Meanwhile, Twin Cities Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum took in more than $70 million apiece for an array of transportation and community projects, including $500,000 in job training for ex-offenders and $20 million for the Central Corridor light-rail line between Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Not all earmarks remain in public coffers. Working with the state's two U.S. senators last year, Ellison and McCollum got some $1.6 million for a military contract with St. Paul-based Twin Star Medical Inc. It's for technology that saves human tissue and avoids battlefield amputations. A similar $3.2 million contract would go to Minneapolis-based Sterilucent Inc., which is developing new ways to sterilize medical instruments.

Oberstar and Rep. Collin Peterson also worked with the state's senators on a $2.4 million earmark providing a defense contract for Medina-based Polaris Defense to make tactical all-terrain vehicles.

Most of the state's signature earmarks go to road and bridge improvements, projects that Klobuchar describes as "critical in creating jobs to fuel local business."

Even before the old earmark season ends, a new one begins. Oberstar, one of the most prodigious earmarkers in Congress, is already receiving local funding requests for 2010. One is from the Metropolitan Council, which lists a half-dozen Twin Cities projects it would like to see funded, from light rail to bus and transit systems.

A Feb. 20 request letter, signed by Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell, concludes on this note: "As you know, Governor Pawlenty and the Metropolitan Council do not support congressional earmarks ..."