Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) bestowed its ‘porker of the month’ honor on California Republican Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon this week for “his dogged pursuit of pork and weaseling his way around the ongoing earmark ban.”
The self-proclaimed “taxpayer watchdog” cited McKeon’s role in establishing the Mission Force Enhancement Transfer Fund, which it calls a “$1 billion slush fund” created by the House Armed Services Committee chairman to circumvent House Republicans’ ban on earmarks.
The final version of the fund, passed as part of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, “contains 111 legislative provisions costing taxpayers $651.7 million,” according to CAGW. “59 of the provisions, or 53 percent, appear to be similar to projects defined as earmarks in CAGW’s 2010 Congressional Pig Book,” the group says.
According to CAGW, the fund “seems to be designed to allow members to secure pork for their districts without violating the congressional earmark moratorium.”
The fund was created with savings from military programs “so the Department of Defense will have significant resources to address long-standing capability gaps,” a spokesman for McKeon told Defense News.
However, lawmakers were able to include amendments to target spending within the fund, which was included in the larger defense spending bill that passed the House last month.
Despite apparent attempts to undo longstanding earmarking habits — including making amendments district-neutral, assigned only to categories rather than specific projects and contracted after a competitive process — many of the actual items appear to be earmarks.
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Taxpayers for Common Sense identified two examples that appear to be pork in amendments offered by California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter and Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Robert Brady.
According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, Hunter “added $5 million to the $42.4 million budgeted for night vision advanced technology. This was for ‘development and fielding of a solution for helicopter ‘brownout’ situational awareness.’ Guess the $2.4 million earmark he got for Trex Enterprises in the FY10 defense spending bill for ‘Brownout Situational Awareness Sensors’ wasn’t enough.”
Brady, meanwhile, “got $3.5 million added to the $77 million budgeted for Combating Terrorism Technology Support so it would include ‘risk assessment and resource allocation.’ Sounds familiar. That’s right we found in FY10 the $2 million he got for the Foreign Research Institute’s Center on Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism in Philadelphia for –you guessed it — ‘Comprehensive and Integrated Procedures for Risk Assessment and Resource Allocation.'”
Taxpayers for Common Sense noted that one explanation for the fund’s alleged misuse is that amendments “were adopted ‘en bloc’ — in packages of dozens — rather than individually,” making it more difficult for lawmakers to vote against particular programs and diffusing responsibility.
In announcing the ‘porker’ award, CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “[McKeon’s] tactics represent exactly the type of unaccountable behavior that the earmark moratorium was intended to eliminate.”
The effort to publicly shame McKeon was coupled with praise for Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, who is currently running for the Senate. CAGW heaped praise on Flake for a successful amendment to remove $348 million from the fund “before the entire slush fund could be raided.”
Flake provided a statement to TheDC regarding the fund, saying that “the idea of sending the Pentagon essentially a blank check for a couple hundred million dollars in this fiscal climate is troubling.”
Armed Services Committee Spokesman John Noonan dismissed CAGW’s negative characterization of the fund in a statement to TheDC.
“Under House Rule 21, an earmark is defined as money that is directed to a political district or business without the benefit of competition,” Noonan wrote in an email. “Earlier this year, the Chairman prohibited that practice.”
Noonan said that the amendments “fill capability gaps in the defense budget while creating competition where there was none before.”
Contrary to CAGW’s strident critique of the fund, Noonan asserted that “The process treats every cent of taxpayer money with respect, while providing our troops the tools they need to keep America safe.”