‘Earmarks’ or ‘pork,’ Georgia getting federal bucks

WASHINGTON — Congress is getting an earful over “earmarks” — those pork-barrel spending projects tucked inside the federal budget — and Georgia and many of its lawmakers are far from exempt from the controversy.

Georgia lawmakers have added nearly $99 million worth of earmarks to the federal spending bill making its way through the Senate and expected to get President Barack Obama’s signature on Friday. The bill — with a $410 billion total price tag — covers government spending through September.

Included in the earmarks are millions of dollars for improving Georgia roads, sewer systems and airports — including $1.8 million for environmental infrastructure in Atlanta and $1.3 million for clean fuel buses and facilities for MARTA.

Other earmarks include $300,000 to preserve a 1925 train coach repair shop in Savannah, $95,000 for a Jewish retirement community in Atlanta, and $209,000 to study ways to improve blueberry production in Georgia.

Proponents of earmarks say they’re not just necessary, but expected — even when it comes to studying blueberries.

“It’s all economic development,” said U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, a Democrat from Albany. “This is helping pump life into our economy.”

According to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, Bishop either individually or with others got nearly 60 earmarks, the most of any Georgia member of Congress. He and two other Georgia representatives, Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican, and Jim Marshall, a Macon Democrat, as well as Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, requested the blueberry funding.

Critics say earmarks waste taxpayer money and can lead to corruption, since they’re often tied to requests from lobbyists and big campaign donors.

Since lawmakers can simply request to add earmarks to spending bills, and they don’t have to go through the same sort of appropriations process as other government spending, earmarks also don’t get proper scrutiny, critics say.

“The earmark process is just a bad way to get things done,” said Jared Thomas, Georgia director for Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit political group that is a critic of earmarks. “If these things really are intended to stimulate the economy, let’s put it through the general appropriations process where it can be vetted and everybody can see what’s happening.”

Sen. John McCain, a longtime critic of earmarks, has railed against them and their inclusion in the so-called federal omnibus spending bill for the past two days in Congress.

“I’m angry … but I’m not nearly as angry as the taxpayers are,” McCain said Wednesday of the latest laundry list of earmarks. McCain sponsored an amendment that would strip all earmarks out of the current spending bill, but the amendment was defeated Tuesday.

Bishop said he takes umbrage to critics of earmarks.

“Those … who feel that members should not utilize the political process to bring projects that are beneficial to the people who they represent in my opinion are derelict in their duties,” Bishop said.

On the campaign trail, Obama also criticized earmarks. The White House has characterized the current spending bill and the earmarks in it as leftover business from the Bush Administration, but has pledged a thorough review of earmarks later.

Georgia actually has a relatively small piece of the earmark pie in the current so-called omnibus spending bill. In all, the bill includes more than 8,500 earmarks worth $7.7 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Earmarks “are a Petri dish for corruption,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the group.

Even some of the beneficiaries of earmarks say they are in principle against them.

Chambliss, for example, voted for amendments that would get rid of earmarks. Yet in the current spending bill, he either individually or with others requested 67 of them worth nearly $46 million — including the one for the train shop in Savannah.

“Sen. Chambliss has always supported eliminating earmarks and will continue to do so,” Chambliss’ spokeswoman, Bronwyn Lance Chester said in a statement. “But as long as the rules allow him to request worthwhile projects to help Georgians, he will continue to do so,” she said.

Still others have pledged to avoid them altogether.

Georgia Republican Reps. Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County, Paul Broun of Athens, Tom Price of Roswell and Nathan Deal of Gainesville have all signed pledges that they won’t request earmarks.

“We think if you want the process to change, you’ve got to lead by example,” said Westmoreland, who said he thinks earmarks “just breed corruption.