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When thousands of people donate no more than $100 per person per election, we can build a campaign without money from special interests. _______________________ But it's about more than money. We need your energy and your enthusiasm, too. Sign up to volunteer on Jim Hansen's campaign for Congress.
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As taxpayers, we deserve a more transparent process for funding projects
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Location: Blogs Jim's Blog |
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| Posted by: Jim Hansen |
3/23/2006 |
We the American taxpayers deserve transparency in how our public funds are spent. Because Congress is so close to the special interests that fund their campaigns, Congress slips all kinds of special deals into appropriations bills through a practice they call “earmarking.” It is long past time for Congress's earmarking system to be overhauled, to make it clearer to the public who is paying the bills and to ensure open and objective criteria are applied to how projects are prioritized.
We pay the bills as American taxpayers and so we deserve transparency in how our public funds are spent. Because Congress is so close to the special interests that fund their campaigns, Congress slips all kinds of special deals into appropriations bills through a practice they call “earmarking.”
This might seem like a convenient way of spending billions of dollars but it has gotten out of hand and led to even more “pork-barrel” spending. It also removes the public from the public spending process.
Members of Congress must be embarrassed by this system because most of these deals are not even described in the spending bill they vote on. A description of most of these deals are buried in the committee or conference reports. The money still flows from taxpayers’ pockets, it is just much harder to track.
Our communities regularly compete with each other for federal grants for all sorts of important projects. When there is strong local involvement including matching funds from the city, the state and other local groups, the chances of receiving the grants are high.
The earmarking, pork-barrel process allows some projects to cut in line, to by-pass the competition and get funds directly from the treasury. That leaves less money for those projects that may be far more worthy and would prevail in a competitive process but don’t have the political inside track.
I have managed a small business for over a decade. It is a not-for-profit organization so I have written a lot of grants. I am not afraid of competing with other organizations. In fact, competition makes us stronger. It also makes us more accountable and makes us reach out to involve more people in the community in our projects.
As taxpayers, we deserve an objective standard for how our funds our spent. If a project is in the public’s best interest, and Congress wants to go outside of the competitive system previously set up, then we deserve to have open honest votes by our elected officials and an explanation why this is a special circumstance.
Congress sets up the competitive grant process. If they don’t like the way grants are prioritized, they must be more open and honest about it. Going around the process for their pet projects, but leaving it in place for all others is irresponsible.
Of course, if Members of Congress were not spending so much of their time raising campaign cash from special interest groups, they would be less tempted to go around the processes they put in place and bury special funding provisions to benefit those interests.
It is long past time for the earmarking system to be overhauled, to make it clearer to the public who is paying the bills and to ensure open and objective criteria are applied to how projects seeking public funds get prioritized. That’s how we do it in our small business and our local governments. That’s how Congress should do it too.
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