Sarah Palin, earmarks and the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: September 13, 2008
GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin finally emerged from her media blackout this week to tape an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson.
Among the topics the two discussed was the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere.” (Watch the clip and read the excerpt here.)
You no doubt know by now that, yes, Palin did tell the Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that Bridge to Nowhere.’” But that was after she had lobbied for the funding and advocated it during her gubernatorial run in 2006. She didn’t tell Congress “thanks but no thanks” on the funding. She accepted it and used it for different projects. Her reversal hinged on her belief that the ballooning costs of the bridge project had rendered it impractical and her perception of public opinion that had turned against the project. That public opinion made it all but impossible to secure more funds to cover the cost increases, she believed.
I’ve been on the inside of government funding fights. I know how the process works. Let’s just say—hold on, idealists; this may come as a shock to you – government budgets don’t function on a merit-based system. Politics is everything. Worthiness counts for nearly nothing. This explains why I have seen money that could have gone to fund effective, efficient child-welfare programs allocated to repave a parking lot, instead.
The earmark process has become the face of everything that’s wrong with Washington. Given the abuses that have occurred over the years, that reputation is well deserved. But what most people don’t understand is that if the regular budget worked as it should, if it funded programs on merit and not how long their sponsor has been in Congress, earmarks might not exist.
And if they did, they’d be a whole lot harder to blame for our budget mess.
So here’s the thing: Alaskans are taxpayers, too, and there is nothing unreasonable about them expecting to see some of that money come back to their communities. Say what you will about the worthiness of that particular project, the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere.“ Say what you will about the earmark process. But do not fault the people of Alaska, or their elected representatives at the state and federal levels, for fighting for their share of the government pie.
When I was still living in Florida a few years ago, there was a huge debate raging about transportation funding. Florida had a $38 billion (yes, with a B) transportation infrastructure shortfall. (By comparison, the entire state budget at that time was $67.7 billion.) How we ended up with that shortfall, of course, is another story entirely. But part of the solution being advanced by elected leaders involved getting “our fair share” of federal road funds.
The argument went that of all the taxes that went to Washington from the Sunshine State, only about 78 cents on the dollar came back to Florida for projects there. Those elected officials began to call Florida a “donor state.” Congressional candidates ran on platforms that consisted of little more than a pledge to get “our fair share.”
“Our fair share.“ There is a big philosophical debate wrapped up in those three little words. The Florida argument turns on the premise that each state is entitled to get back what it sends to Washington.
The congressional budget process is based on the premise that the federal government will provide for the states based on its resources – resources it raises from those same states. If all the money collected from each state went back to that state, there wouldn’t be a need to raise it in the first place. So there a presumption of resource redistribution inherent in the system.
The redistribution occurs through a complex web of labyrinthine formulas contrived by government accountants. In some cases, the formulas are many decades, even half a century, old. In theory, the formulas “equalize” the states based on their need and respective abilities to meet those needs. In practice, sometimes because of the age of the formulas and sometimes because of other solutions at the state level that the formulas don’t take into account, inequalities are sometimes actually exacerbated before funding is doled out.
Congressmen and women try to tweak these formulas from time to time, ostensibly to “improve fairness.” Of course, this “increased fairness” always results in a bigger piece of the pie for their home state, and whether other congressmen and women support the changes is based entirely on how the changes would affect their districts.
And we wouldn’t expect them to do otherwise. What congressman or woman would go to Washington and introduce or support changes to a federal funding formula that would cost his or her state millions, if not billions, of dollars?
Answer: Only one who wasn’t interested in coming back.
Earmarks were created to be the pothole-fillers of the federal budget, filling in where the formulas had left holes. They were meant to be a safety net for worthy projects that didn’t fit the bureaucratic mold. But, as with everything else in Washington, earmarks have been abused.
The bottom line is that while it’s easy to fault the earmark system in campaign speeches and 30-second advertisements, the reality – like everything else in politics – is something entirely different. Elected officials do the best they can with all the tools they have at their disposal to take care of their districts. And they should.
As you know, I’m in Louisville, Ky., this weekend for the National Quartet Convention. We had the TV on in our hotel room, and I happened to see a commercial for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. You may know that as Senate Minority Leader, McConnell is the GOP’s most powerful senator. The ad (see it here) spotlights his efforts to pull down $3 million in federal funds for a community center in Owensboro. McConnell “stepped up,” the announcer says, and community center leaders opine about how lost they would be without McConnell and the U.S.S. Earmark coming to their rescue.
Community center? No doubt a worthwhile project. But whether the federal government should be funding a local community center is debatable.
But not all of McConnell’s earmarks have been as noble, as his challenger Bruce Lunsford eagerly points out. McConnell has been an obstinate roadblock in the way of earmark reform, and he has been named one of the most corrupt members of Congress – for the second year in a row.
The moral of this story: Not all earmarks are created equal. Some earmarks originate with elected officials of character. Others … not so much.
What does all this have to do with Palin and her claims about the Bridge to Nowhere? Well, it explains why she “was for the Bridge to Nowhere, before she was against it,” as Democrats have so gleefully crowed over the past week and a half. Palin was fighting for funding for her state, as any governor should. And as any governor should, she reallocated the funding when the project became untenable. (And isn’t it better to be called a “flip-flopper” than to flush millions of taxpayers dollars down the toilet into a black hole?) But when John McCain, that all-time champion of earmark hatred, chose her to be his running mate, Palin had to adopt tougher language to describe what she did.
Politics. Nothing more, nothing less.
Personally, I don’t find any fault with what Sarah Palin has done with the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Remember that “Nowhere” isn’t nowhere to the people who live in Ketchikan, Alaska. In addition to improving transportation for the nearly quarter million people who fly into the Ketchikan International Airport every year, that bridge would have provided a bunch of jobs and fostered a lot of economic development. And it would be a very poor (and unsuccessful) politician who ran on a campaign promise like, “Vote for me! I don’t think we should receive any federal funds at all!”
With that said, though, politically, Palin would do herself a favor by not highlighting this issue in her campaign speeches. She did what she had to do when she had to do it. That doesn’t make a great sound bite, but it’s the truth.
As I’ve said here before, Palin’s insistence on continually bringing this issue to the forefront gives the Democrats ammunition against her. It gives them the opportunity to paint her as a flip-flopper, and they send a parade of pundits to the talk shows to happily repeat the 2008 version of John Kerry’s statement about the $87 billion Iraq war funding: “She was for it before she was against it.”
And that’s why Sarah Palin’s line about the Bridge to Nowhere is itself a bridge to nowhere, regardless of her good intentions on the project, and why earmarks, while a convenient target, don’t tell the whole story of the muddled, red mess that is the federal budget.
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