Brian Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com. His column appears Saturdays in the Journal Review. Contact him at bhowey2@ gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @hwypol.view.
INDIANAPOLIS — A cornerstone to Richard Mourdock’s Republican primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar has been his vociferous opposition to Congressional earmarks.
“Sen. Lugar has become so out of touch with Hoosier voters he doesn’t understand the need to end a practice that lends itself to abuse and corruption at taxpayers’ expense and which continues to add to our national debt,” Mourdock says in a TV ad. “Dick Lugar won’t vote to end wasteful spending and earmarks. I will.”
On Feb. 14, the Club for Growth, headed by former Indiana congressman Chris Chocola, endorsed Mourdock in large part because Lugar was one of 13 Republican senators who refused to support a permanent earmark ban. In an op-ed article for the National Review, Chocola reasoned, “‘Earmarks,’ also known as pork-barrel spending, are considered a ‘gateway drug’ to corruption and bigger government in Washington.”
And Lugar’s stance: ceding Congressional earmarks to the executive branch is simply populist showboating. When I asked him about it on Monday, he called it a “bogus issue,” explaining that it won’t save a penny. “The money will still be there. The bureaucrats are going to spend the money.”
“Instead of surrendering Constitutional authority to Washington bureaucrats and the Obama Administration, Congress should focus on reducing spending on both entitlement and discretionary spending programs,” Lugar said in 2010.
Here’s the reality of earmarks: If Congress eliminated 100 percent of them in fiscal year 2010, it would have cut the federal budget by less than 0.5 percent. U.S. Treasury statistics revealed in 2010 the federal government spent $3.46 trillion while running a deficit of $1.29 trillion. The Office of Management and Budget reported that earmarks accounted for $11.1 billion.
Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent observed in his Plumline column, “Conservatives target earmarks because, in isolation, they’re often hard to defend, and they’re an easy symbol of Washington greed to rail against. The problem is that while they are frequent fodder for political rhetoric, they account for less than 1 percent of the federal budget.”
Now, is Lugar a typical incumbent who can’t pull the trigger on spending cuts?
No.
He and U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman introduced the Rural Economic Farm and Ranch Sustainability and Hunger Act (REFRESH) which would cut $40 billion from federal spending. Specifically, it would reform farm programs, cutting $16 billion, a 24.5 percent reduction. Conservation programs would be updated and streamlined for a savings of $11.3 billion, a 17.6 percent reduction. Nutrition program eligibility loopholes would be closed saving $13.9 billion, only a 2 percent reduction. Roughly two-thirds of the savings would come from farm and conservation programs, and a third from nutrition programs, which represent three-fourths of the USDA budget.
“This bill provides good farm and nutrition policy and saves $40 billion,” Lugar said. “Farm Bill politics has long frustrated reform efforts by myself and others. The current urgency to meet our deficit reduction targets gives us the chance to make smart changes.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, like Mourdock and the Club for Growth, have pressed for the end of earmarks. It’s interesting, however, that Pence’s 6th Congressional District ranked 42nd out of 435 districts in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2010, receiving $1.24 billion, according to the Environmental Working Group. Of Indiana’s nine districts, eight ranked in the top 100.
Now, what was Chocola— a born again deficit hawk — doing during his two terms in Congress from 2003 to 2007? In May 2006, he voted to extend the Bush tax cuts which helped push the Clinton era budget surpluses to a $400 billion deficit. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Medicare prescription drug plan passed in 2004, the Great Recession of 2008-09 and the various federal bailouts ended the Bush presidency with a $1.4 trillion deficit.
As Congressman Chocola, he was an earmark aficionado, coming at a time when the federal deficits were exploding. In an Aug. 24, 2006 South Bend Tribune article on earmarks for Notre Dame University, Chocola said, “I’m happy to defend anything that I would request.”
On Feb. 19, 2004, Chocola also personally delivered a $1 million check for the Hoosier Heartland Highway at Logansport and cited the benefits of a safer interchange.
And in 2006, Chocola said in BizVoice Magazine, “If they are taken out, they will really not reduce spending. That money will be spent anyway, and it will be spent in an arbitrary formula or by some bureaucrat either in Indianapolis or in Washington D.C.”
Chocola refused my interview requests. Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller told me, “Chris Chocola isn’t on the ballot in Indiana, Senator Lugar is.”
While Mourdock is an ardent purist on an earmark ban that will have negligible impact on the deficits, his key patron — Chocola — who will fund much of his race against Lugar with bundled SuperPAC money from donors whose identity will be shielded from voters — appears to prescribe to the theory of “do as I say, not as I do.”
