By Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 2nd, 2009
President Barack Obama may have banned earmarks in his $825 billion economic stimulus package, butlobbyists, lawmakers and interest groups will still be allowed to funnel tax dollars to pet projects.
This is not to suggest that either Obama’s stimulus plan, or his attempt to stem the undue influence of moneyover politics, is a poor idea – in fact, each is an essential measure.
But under the current Obama stimulus bill, dollars will partly be apportioned according to the endorsements ofadministration officials–as well as through the say of various state and local powers–and partly through arcaneformulas that the bill spells out, according to The Associated Press (AP).
Such a funding process makes it much harder for citizens to determine exactly who is getting the money, andmay inadvertently make the act of government funding even more secretive than it is now.
Thus “there is a challenge now that projects will be added behind closed doors without a paper trail,” statedKeith Ashdown, an official working for the government watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Or to state it more clearly: Americans are being asked to spend almost a trillion dollars, without preciselyknowing how that money is going to be spent.
Lawmakers previously had directly added legislative language to a bill which set aside dollars for particularprojects. That procedure, known as earmarking, was banned from the stimulus package by Obama andDemocratic leaders on Capitol Hill.
The funds instead mainly will be allocated according to obscure formulas discussed in the legislation. In anumber of other cases, projects for funding will be chosen by Obama administrators, governors and a spate ofstate and local officials.
“Somebody’s going to earmark it somewhere,” consultant Howard Marlowe told AP. Marlowe works for acoalition trying to preserve beaches.
Though the earmark ban does appear to have made it harder for lobbyists to nab some of those stimulusdollars for their clients, the new rules also ensure that any successful lobbying is being done indirectly–thusmaking a number of such actions impossible to track.
Obama of course campaigned on promises to create a more accountable and transparent federal government. And to be fair, the president has pushed for a system that will, in time, allow citizens to trackprecisely where stimulus dollars are going via an Internet-accessed search engine. Democratic lawmakers alsohave devised a stringent oversight system, which will create a special board to oversee how the economicstimulus money is being spent.
The problem with such fine measures? None of them will be instituted until after the stimulus packagebecomes law.
Obama’s stimulus plan and his desire to clean up Washington are much-needed measures–they probably arethe main reasons he was elected to the presidency last November.
But it’s hard for citizens to back such a massive stimulus bill when they have no clear means of knowing howtheir taxpayer dollars are being invested.
