ABOVE: Cap’n Special Ed
Special Ed, the blogger formerly known as Cap’n Ed Morrissey, has been spewing more bilge water to defend Sarah Palin from the earmark business. Rather than the resorting to the typical “blar blar blar POW sexist Democrats blar blar lipstick blar blar POW,” Special Ed has decided to go for the gusto with this argument: “Palin didn’t request any earmarks.”
Now you probably imagine that Ed is going to prove this vastly amusing premise by examining the fonts and kerning in appropriations legislation and claiming that they reveal that the Alaska earmarks actually came from the Governor of Connecticut. But Special Ed has decided to focus his keen intellect and kerning skills on the definition of “earmark.” You see, if you define “earmark” as an “earlobe tattoo,” for example, then it’s game over. Do ya see any earlobe tattoos on Palin? Huh? HUH?? Then she didn’t request any earmarks. So there, you silly liberals.
You think I’m kidding, don’t you? Sadly, no:
Earmarks are not equivalent to all federal spending … . If these requests did not come in earmark form, then Congress has the opportunity to vote directly on spending the money in Alaska based on the legitimacy of the projects. Earmarks, on the other hand, get slipped into bills without such Congressional scrutiny and are almost impossible to remove regardless of the uselessness of the project.
Palin didn’t ask for earmarks, but for federal funding for projects, which could have come from normal appropriations requests as well. The mechanism gets chosen by Alaska’s legislators, not by the Governor.
That is just out and out pathetic. Morrissey, who has less qualifications to talk about earmarks than Palin does to be a city sanitation supervisor, has, rather than drawing on any experience with the legislative process, shoved his stubby little fingers into his capacious posterior, pulled out a few dingleberries, and is waving them around as savory delicacies before, you know, eating them.
Although there is some disagreement around the edges about the definition of earmark, Special Ed has hit pretty wide of the mark. The Office of Management and Budget — which, by the way, is run by the White House and not by a band of deranged Palin-hating liberals — has the most concise and widely-accepted definition of an earmark.
Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds. Congress includes earmarks in appropriation bills – the annual spending bills that Congress enacts to allocate discretionary spending – and also in authorization bills.
Oops. Special Ed has indeed drooled on himself once more. An earmark is funding provided to specific locations without a request from the White House and without the ability of the White House to control or redirect those funds. They don’t occur in a special piece of legislation, as Ed apparently imagines (cf. “in earmark form”), titled “Earmark Appropriations” or some such. Funding headed to Alaska for specific projects at the direction of Congress are earmarks, whether or not they are in normal appropriations legislation or any other type of legislation.
Of course, Special Ed has a few concerns that perhaps he’s gotten things jumbled up and that his definition of earmark is a mash-up of things he learned watching Fox News and things he remembered from seeing late-night reruns of Gilligan’s Island, so he has a back-up plan:
Also, it’s pretty easy to miss the fact that Governors can’t earmark, because they aren’t members of Congress. Palin would have to rely on Ted Stevens, Lisa Murkowski, and Don Young to propose legislation for her funding requests, and none of these three have any hesitation to use earmarks rather than legislation.
Uh oh. The “technical” argument. Palin didn’t ask for the earmarks, the Alaska delegation did. Nevermind that Palin hired a lobbyist to ask the delegation for earmarks. Nevermind that (according to sources inside Lisa Murkowski’s office) Palin and her minions relentlessly called Murkowski’s office (and presumably those of Stevens and Young) on a near-daily basis to harangue them and ask where the money was. She didn’t “request” the earmarks.
This is a very useful argument, both for six-year olds and for wingnut bloggers. For example, Bush didn’t invade Iran Iraq, the soldiers did. Cheney isn’t responsible for torturing people, the torturers are. McCain doesn’t “own” three thousand houses, his wife does. I didn’t hit my sister, Mommy, the stick I was holding did.
