Thursday, June 23, 2011
An earmark by any other name is still an earmark, as long as certain conditions apply. An earmark is a budget expenditure that goes directly to a specific project without having been requested by the agency or department that would normally oversee it.
Lawmakers in the U.S. House promised to do away with the much-criticized earmarks, which have added millions of dollars to the federal budget each year. And while the term “earmark” is no longer uttered, its function is still alive in the form of “programmatic requests.”
Any earmark first approved before the ban that has been continuously approved since is now eligible for programmatic request status, which allows lawmakers to put in for the funding year after year.
An example of programmatic requests in action was found by The Washington Post in a defense appropriations bill unveiled last week. House members padded the Obama administration’s $664 million request for medical research in the Department of Defense by adding another $523.5 million in the form of programmatic requests.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
House Earmarks Morph into ‘Programmatic Requests’ (by Walter Pincus, Washington Post)
Some Technical Comments on the 2012 DOD Appropriations Bill (by Winslow Wheeler, Center for Defense Information)
Goodbye Earmarks; Hello Phonemarks, Lettermarks and “Soft” Earmarks (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Companies Creatively Get Around Ban on Earmarks (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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