Cantor swears off earmarks

For the past two fiscal years, U.S. Congressman Eric Cantor, R-Richmond, has sworn off congressional earmarks, a.k.a. “pork barrel spending” in which legislators request federal money for their state or district’s projects.

That’s because Cantor, who represents Culpeper, Madison and Orange counties along with the rest of the 7th District in the House of Representatives, feels the system is too unbridled.

“As a Republican-controlled Congress, it was out of hand and now as a Democratic-controlled Congress, it’s out of hand. The amount of spending is extraordinary, yet it continues,” he said in a phone interview with the Star-Exponent Tuesday.

“The spending would make a drunken sailor blush. This is not what our framers had in mind.”

According to figures compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a D.C.-based watchdog group, Congress disclosed 11,234 earmarks worth $14.8 billion in this year’s spending bill.

Another $3.5 billion were added with no sponsors listed, totaling $18.3 billion in specially requested federal funding in the fiscal 2008 spending bill.

The group’s Web site at taxpayer.net contains a large Excel file listing many of the projects that made it into the final appropriations bill.

For example, Oak Brook, Ill., got $28,000 to study obesity in elementary school children.

Montana got $372,000 for “agricultural literacy;” Plattsburgh, N.Y., received $98,000 to restore its 1924 vaudeville theater; the U.S. Army in Pinellas, Fla. got $1 million for “advanced battery technology; the Alleghany-Highlands Economic Development Corporation in Virginia got $282,000 in federal funds for “business assistance software tools” and West Virginia will see $485,000 coming its way for “agricultural waste utilization,” just to name a few of the expenditures.

Cantor, along with other congressional leaders, is calling for “a moratorium” on earmarks.

“We need to come up with some type of best practices so the public can restore its confidence in the way the federal government is spending taxpayers’ dollars,” he said.
“There is no requirement that anything balances,” Cantor said. “That is why we have continued to see the number of earmarks increase. There is very little in the way of a vetting process to make sure taxpayer dollars are being spent prudently.”

Not all earmarks are bad, he added, and some are indeed “worthy of attention.”
But the system is broken, Cantor said, requiring both parties to come together for more regulation in the way congressional earmarks are allocated.

“The more we waste taxpayers’ dollars the less likely we can tackle the more important things this country faces,” Cantor said, mentioning national security and the ongoing energy crisis.

Considering that most other congressional districts across the country receive some level of earmark through their respective legislator, does the Seventh District lose then because Cantor isn’t on board with it?

Not necessarily, he said, because other ways exist for localities to pull down federal funds.

“There are formulas in place for transportation, health care, other projects,” Cantor said.

“The monies can also come down through the federal bureaucracy through the state by the governor.”

For example, he said, his office works with local rescue, human services, police, sheriffs and fire agencies on preparing applications for federal grants.

“Money gets to the local level, but this overwhelming flurry of pork barrel spending needs to stop,” Cantor said.