Earmarks By Another Name

He’ll remain nameless, but I met a Congressman the other day. He’s the incumbent Democrat in my S.F. Bay Area Congressional district and isn’t expected to lose, so that should narrow it down a bit for those who want to figure it out. I was invited to attend a private meeting between him, his staff, and a deserving local agency in need of Federal funding.

In general, he looked burned out and he bitched about the “deficit hawks” in Congress who are preventing all deficit spending. A frustrated unrepentant Dem was he. Then it got interesting.

Here’s how they’re getting earmarks through nowadays: he said earmarks are now euphemistically referred to as “appropriations requests.” He acknowledged that regular old earmarks — “legislative appropriations requests” — are verrrry difficult “in these troubled times” (meaning they’re dangerous to incumbents’ political health, heh heh) but said that “administrative appropriations requests” are still quite doable. Those are where you, the requesting constituent, find some pot of money in a Federal agency or department’s budget you’d like to tap into, and your friendly neighborhood Congressman calls up the agency and “suggests” that they direct it your way as an administrative decision.

The best thing about this sort of earmark, of course, is that it’s pretty much undocumented and untraceable.

Just thought y’all would like to know.