Ron Paul one of only four House Republicans to request earmarks for 2011 budget (UPDATED)

51 earmarks requests totaling $358,303,155 from libertarian favorite

By Patrick Caldwell
Wednesday, December 08, 2010 at 5:12 pm



U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was one of only four House Republicans to break rank from the party and request earmarks despite a Republican Conference earmark moratorium. Paul sent 41 earmark requests totaling $157,093,544 for the 2011 Fiscal Year. His largest single request was $19,500,000 for a naval training ship at the Texas Maritime Academy in Galveston, followed by a $18,126,000 to provide maintenance on the Matagorda Ship Channel.

For Fiscal Year 2010, Paul requested 54 total earmarks, adding up to $398,460,640 in pork that the former presidential candidate sought to bring home to his district. These requests were made prior to the House Republican Conference’s voluntary ban on filing earmarks.

Paul’s largest request in 2010 was $51.5 million in federal money to be spent on “Reconstruction of Bluewater Highway Hurricane Evacuation Route Between Brazoria and Galveston Counties in Texas.” He requested another $50 million to be directed to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and $46 million for deepening the Texas City channel. The majority of Paul’s requests were for projects related to various ports and channels, though other sectors of his district also received attention, such as $20 million for a hospital in Chambers County. Even smaller projects received attention from the libertarian representative, such as $2.5 million requested “to redevelop historic downtown area and to purchase trash cans, bike racks and decorative street lighting” in Baytown.


Taxpayers for Common Sense released a database Tuesday of all the earmarks requested by members of Congress for Fiscal Year 2011. Over $130 billion was requested across 39,294 earmarks. With most House Republicans abstaining from the process, the majority of those requests came from Congressional Democrats. House Democrats requested over $51 billion, outpaced by Senate Democrats with just under $55 billion. On the other hand Senate Republicans only asked for $22 billion, with the four House Republicans accounting for a little over $1 billion in earmark requests. Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu had the highest request total for the year at around $4.5 billion.

From 2008-2010, the average Texas congressman brought back $74 million in earmarks, according to an analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics and Taxpayers for Common Sense, as the Texas Independent previously reported. In those three years, Paul sponsored/co-sponsored 45 successful earmarks totaling nearly $120 million. That was the sixth-greatest total among U.S. House members from Texas.

Of the five U.S. House members who brought home more total earmarked money than Paul, three were defeated in the November elections — Democratic U.S. Reps. Chet Edwards, Solomon Ortiz and Ciro Rodriguez (who all have large military installations in or near their districts.)



oops...

In Defense of Ron Paul’s Earmarks

by Eric Phillips by Eric Phillips

DIGG THIS

One of the questions asked of Dr. Ron Paul after his speech to the Robert Taft Club came from a guy I met at an Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) conference the previous summer. At that event,he was apoplectic after Randy Barnett’s talk,in which the supposed Rothbardian outlined his justification of the state. We’ll never be accepted by average Americans if we don’t tailor our message and moderate our demands,my fellow IHS alum argued. I talked to him later in the week and he explained to me that while he was sympathetic to the free market,he considered himself a libertarian chiefly because he was a consistent social liberal who despised the restrictive social atmosphere that conservatives advocate. A beltway libertarian if there ever was one!

"Congressman,I have tremendous respect for you," the IHS alum averred,"but I was shocked to read in a Reason Magazine profile that you actually stuff earmarks into appropriation bills just like every other member of Congress and I thought you were different,sir,ah,you of course vote against the bill,but I was curious how you could justify stuffing earmarks just like every other member of Congress" (see here at 4:25). Dr. Paul’s response is clear and convincing,but I’d like to go into more depth here. The issue is complicated and while earmark critics have some reasonable points,Dr. Paul’s earmarking is ultimately not at odds with his philosophy.

As Paul notes in his answer,cutting the number of earmarks does not cut spending. An earmark is a congressional provision that directs federal agencies to spend funds already authorized on specific projects. If the funds aren’t earmarked,the agencies can spend the money any way they see fit. That is,the executive branch,rather than Congress, will determine how the taxpayer’s money is spent. This point cannot be stressed enough because even the writers at the Wall Street Journal do not understand it. After quoting a spokesman from Paul’s office reminding them that earmarks do not directly increase spending,the WSJ reports,"On the other hand,good libertarians should want to start cutting somewhere." Didn’t Paul’s office just point out that cutting earmarks does not cut spending?Some argue that earmarks can indirectly increase spending by encouraging corruption –this problem will be dealt with below –but in this passage the WSJ seems to imply that adding earmarks directly increases spending. After writing that good libertarians should start cutting somewhere,they continue:

The problem with earmarking is that each year the habit grows by leaps and bounds so that it now represents real money. It is also a gateway to political corruption –a la Duke Cunningham,and other Congressmen currently under investigation for trading favors for earmarks. [Emphasis added]

By writing "it is also," the writers imply that in addition to increasing spending,earmarks encourage corruption rather than the more coherent argument that earmarks increase spending by encouraging corruption.

Ramesh Ponnuru has more sense on this issue than most other mainstream movement conservatives. He recognizes that earmarks make up less than two percent of the federal budget and that fiscal conservatives should be spending more time and energy on more important spending programs. His response to Senator Jim DeMint’s criticisms of the earmarking process,however,is less than convincing. "The game," DeMint complained,"encouraged everyone to be asking for money and everyone to be voting for bills that were bigger than the budget that had been voted for earlier." Ponnuru counters that,"It is certainly true,as DeMint says,that earmarks can buy support for government-expanding bills. But they can buy support for government-shrinking bills,too [like NAFTA]." First,the hundreds of pages of legislation that created NAFTA did not shrink the size of government. Second,while it is conceivable that earmarks could be used to buy support for a government-shrinking bill,given the nature of government,the number of government-expanding bills is going to far outstrip the number of government-shrinking bills. On net,therefore, the quid pro quo of earmark trading is likely to increase government spending. Yet considering that Dr. Paul always votes "no" on the appropriations bills he requests earmarks for –as his critics concede –he is not involved in this negative aspect of the earmarking process. No amount of earmarks promised to him will convince him to vote "yes" on the bill. They are –as he says –projects meant to return some of his constituents’money that was stolen from them by the federal government,within the context of the current system. The excerpt of the Congressional Quarterly article that Tim Russert referenced (see 6:50) on the Meet the Press interview that reads,"There isn’t much that Rep. Ron Paul thinks the federal government should do…Apparently, though earmarks [that benefit his district] are okay," leaves the impression that Paul would support increasing the federal budget by $400 million just to benefit his district. He would not. He supports forwarding the requests of his constituents that $400 million of funds that the federal government has already taken from them and designated for spending be returned to their district.

Given that Paul isn’t involved in the trading of earmarks for "yes" votes, his requests for earmarks must be judged on the other pros and cons of the practice. Earmarks can lead to ridiculously inefficient projects like the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" because,critics contend,earmarked funds do not go through a merit-based selection process as they would if granted to an executive agency. It’s not surprising that President Bush is a leading advocate of this argument. Ultimately this argument is part of a fruitless crusade to make government more efficient. But that is impossible. There is no way government can allocate resources rationally,no matter what part of it has the authority to dispense funds. The absence of market prices and the profit-and-loss mechanism makes it impossible for governments to accurately compare the value of inputs with outputs. No matter how many forms an executive agency makes you fill out to receive a grant,government cannot accurately measure merit. The phony free market Wall Street crowd’s dream of cutting spending and streamlining government by empowering a unitary executive is both hopeless and fraught with danger. What if,for example,the WSJ gets its way and the president is given the line item veto?Couldn’t the president,as Dr. Paul points out,threaten to cut funding from a recalcitrant congressman’s district if he didn’t support the president’s proposed legislation?

Senator Tom Coburn claims that "the Porkbusters represent what is arguably the only grassroots movement since 1994 to gain traction and build momentum on the core American principle of limited government" [Emphasis in original]. I’ve lived in DC for almost four years now and I’ve been involved with the beltway conservative/libertarian crowd since the beginning. I was working on the earmark issue before it became national news. The enthusiasm for the "Porkbusters" coalition in no way approaches the popularity and dedication of the Ron Paul Revolution,a movement dedicated to the wholesale dismantling of large swaths of the federal government. Barry Goldwater was right. Moderation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. True free market supporters should stop bickering over the way less than two percent of the budget is allocated and start focusing on scraping whole departments,gutting the military industrial complex,and privatizing entitlements.

December 31,2007

nice try

Aren't you just on a roll today...

Freedom is a radical concept.

🌫

What I don't get is why suddenly everyone cares about this. I really don't imagine the average person gives a hoot.

Wheel looks for any reason to discredit RP.

It's simple. Government taxes the people. Ron tries to get as much of that money back to his constituents as possible. It's better than letting the Federal government spend it.

Um,
The House of Rep. is the Federal Govt.
and RP is a huge big spender while he decries the budget deficit and national debt.

All you RP guys tell me to listen to his message while you ignore his record....

He's another corrupt politician,like most of the rest.
#-o

wheel,

So he is against the practice but partakes in it because he that's the way things are?

Holy Chit !
we're agree on something...
IT'S A COLD DAY IN HELL !!

#-o

wheel,

Good lord you 2 are dense.

Either that or you're poking at me with a stick.

You have to admit the phrase better than letting the Federal government spend it is pretty funny when by doing so he is having the federal government spend it.

Better than letting the Federal government spend the money on what they want to spend it on. Better than letting the executive branch spend the money.

But, I guess he could just let his district's tax money go, rather than try to bring the money back to the district.





I'm done with this thread. You guys are just trolling now.

BD1.

Its was Wheels op.

Usual cast chimed in.

obviuosly you aren't familiar with RP's district,,
The demographics there don't indicate that they pay a lot of Fed Taxes. The median income there is about $40k per houshold .

doh 🤦

It is federal spending and Ron Paul is a federal employee and part of the Legislative branch. More money is sent back to 'conservative' red states from the fed than they pay in than 'liberal' blue states. I'm pretty sure Texas is not one of them though, but over 20 'red'states fall into this category. Earmarking or just badly run states? We here in the Northeast and California are subsidizing you red state folks, hell even the military. You get more back than you pay in, you are a leach on welfare and should be cut off.

Dude how can you pay "Income Taxes" ?
:-k

With his wife's income!!!!![frypan]

You know it's another value add for being at home all day!

Paul does the nasty for the right reasons lol