Send earmark pilferers home

As the Dow slipped over another precipice and America’s roiling economic unrest popped and bubbled toward overflowing boil Monday, young Sam Rasoul sat in a conference room at The News Virginian performing a proximate, though presumably unintentional, impersonation of old John McCain.

A Democrat going to the bother of challenging a Republican whose grip on the 6th District congressional seat is iron, Rasoul delineated plans to shatter Washington’s earmark culture and reform campaign finance, the former an ambition of McCain’s and the latter an undertaking of his in the guise of McCain-Feingold. “PACs and special interests have taken over,” Rasoul told The News Virginian editorial board, echoing McCain mantra. “We need to put a stop to that.”

Neither Rasoul nor McCain may get their chance, at least not in the offices they covet. Rasoul was hopelessly behind Republican Bob Goodlatte in a poll released in mid-August, and given the 6th District’s heavily conservative tint and the absence of misstep by the incumbent, he does not figure to close the gap. McCain, the Arizona senator and Republican presidential nominee, is fading in the stretch.

But both are worth heeding on the subject of earmarks especially and reform generally.

The Office of Management and Budget defines earmarks as “funds provided by Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction circumvents ... the merit-based or competitive allocation process ... or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds.” In other words, earmarks are the congressional mechanism for scratching backs while avoiding the presidential veto pen.

The federal government in 2008 spent $22 billion in earmarks. Next fiscal year’s tally is yet to be complete, but lawmakers, like hungry truckers at a midnight diner, are rushing to file orders.

Surf the OMB’s Web site at http://earmarks.omb.gov/ for pithy definitions and earmark details, among which one discovers, among other things, that lawmakers plan to spend $3.7 million to research subterranean termites, $500,000 to raise fruit flies, $148,000 to formulate shellfish safety regulations and $2 million on Northern Kentucky University’s College of Informatics. And, for seafarers, try gulping down this cask of earmark addle: $20 million in Chesapeake Bay blue crab disaster aid for fishermen. The disaster? State regulations that squelched crab harvests.

The current leader of Rasoul’s party, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, has himself cast a wide earmark net, requesting $740 million over three years, including $1 million to build a new pavilion at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Obama’s wife, Michelle, coincidentally, is a vice president. The Senate, in a rare fit of restraint, rejected that request.

Rasoul’s opponent, Goodlatte, has not restrained himself from trips to the well. His earmark take was $1.8 million last year, modest considering the average haul among 535 lawmakers was $41 million. Still, it was enough to warrant a swing of velvet glove from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group ordinarily favorable to Goodlatte.

For his part, Rasoul pledges he would not seek earmarks in the unlikely event he were elected. Such voices of reason on earmarks are inevitably swallowed by the tide of lawmakers rushing to the vault door. But Rasoul notes, as others should, that taxpayers stung by bailouts and an emerging recession are turning from weariness to anger. “We can’t continue to operate this way,” Rasoul said. “The people won’t stand for it.” Nor should they.

Voters should demonstrate their disgust by breaking the trend of sending pork-hungry incumbents back to Washington. Firing them at the ballot box is the first step toward restoring sanity in a place where it has long since been lost.