Defense bill provides home for earmarks The Pentagon says it doesn't need any more C-17 jets, but it is getting them — at a cost of $2.4 billion — thanks to the Texas congressional delegation

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon insists it has enough C-17 Globemaster jets, which are partly manufactured in Texas and used by the Air Force to ferry troops and weapons to hot spots around the globe.

Nevertheless, lawmakers from the Lone Star State and elsewhere recently inserted in a defense authorization bill a requirement that the military buy 10 more aircraft at a cost of $2.4 billion.

The project is among the billions of dollars of earmarks, or special funding items, tucked into several defense measures recently approved by the House and Senate for the coming fiscal year.

The number of earmarks is down from previous years as they are increasingly criticized as legislative tricks that avoid competitive bidding and grant application processes and are performed at the behest of lobbyists. Supporters say they allow lawmakers, rather than unelected bureaucrats, to decide where government money goes.

But the huge defense bills remain a major source of earmark funding for lawmakers seeking job-creating, home-state projects— not all of them directly related to military issues.

Texas House members secured 46 earmarks worth more than $100 million in the House defense appropriations bill alone for projects that included funding for research at many of the state's universities and institutions in the Texas Medical Center as well as money for the Johnson Space Center and border control.

In the Senate defense appropriations bill, Republican U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn of Texas inserted 27 earmarks worth $60 million, including funds for trauma care and border security.

Most of the earmarks are for equipment and research not included in the budget submitted by the Pentagon.

''Every dollar that is going to a particular earmark or a C-17 (aircraft) is a dollar that isn't going to other higher priority items in the federal budget," said Steven Ellis, vice president for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group that scrutinizes earmarks.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England warned Congress about the ramifications of funding more C-17s.

''If we keep putting money into C-17s, then frankly, money comes out of some other investment category," he said.

But lawmakers defend programs that provide jobs and business to constituents.

650 jobs in Texas

Seven House lawmakers, including Rep. Kay Granger , R-Fort Worth, requested the C-17 funding in the defense authorization bill.

Manufactured by Chicago-based Boeing Co., the C-17's main subcontractor is Vought Aircraft Industries, with plants in the Dallas area.

Boeing says the aircraft manufacturing project pumps about $1 billion annually into the state's economy. Officials with Vought said that 650 jobs in Texas were directly tied to continued production of the jet.

Defense appropriations for this fiscal year, which ends today, contain 2,646 earmarks worth $10.5 billion.

The House defense spending bill for next year contains 1,409 earmarks worth $6.5 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. A committee of House and Senate members now must merge the House bill with the Senate defense spending measure, which has 936 earmarks worth $5.2 billion. None of the defense bills has been sent to the president.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, nabbed a $4 million earmark in defense appropriations for the Houston-based Alliance for NanoHealth, a seven-institution consortium in the Texas Medical Center that is developing technologies that, among other things, will help detect cancer and allow doctors to use drugs more effectively.

Culberson, who sits on the Appropriations Committee and whose district includes much of the Medical Center, said he added the health care research funding to the defense bill in part because "it is a larger pot of money." But he said that the research is also relevant to the military because the technology could be used to trace biological or chemical agents.

"This is the most exciting and revolutionary medical and scientific research that I will ever have the privilege of helping to fund," said Culberson, who carries in his briefcase a token of the research: a carbon nanotube quantum wire, prized for its electrical conductivity.

A fan at the Pentagon

The Alliance for NanoHealth may also have an important fan at the Pentagon: Dr. S. Ward Casscells , who was tapped by President Bush this year to be assistant secretary of defense for health affairs and was the alliance's first director when he worked at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Culberson spokesman Michael Green said Casscells would ensure the nanoscience would be used to help soldiers.

However, the current alliance director, Dr. Mauro Ferrari, said Casscells was not involved when it came to the consortium applying for the earmark. Ferrari said the earmark is used for equipment and laboratory costs not covered through standard federal research grants that are awarded on a competitive basis and evaluated by peers.

Many of the defense earnmarks are awarded to universities or think tanks for research on military-related issues.

For example, at the behest of San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute, Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-Texas, added $2 million to the House version of the defense budget for research and development of crowd behavior software. The organization says the equipment could be used for crowd control and urban combat planning.

But administration officials say the earmark system is not the best way to ensure that the highest quality research is performed.

In congressional testimony last year, Dr. John Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said that merit review, through a competitive process refereed by scientists, engineers, and other experts, "has the best prospect for ensuring that the most important research is supported."

Marburger said the problem of research earmarks is particularly serious in the Department of Defense.

Texas A&M to benefit

One of the major beneficiaries of these kinds of defense research grants is Texas A&M University in College Station, which gets three earmarks worth $3.5 million in the House defense appropriations bill, including one to develop technology to allow detection of biochemical agents in the atmosphere above the battlefield.

The earmarks were inserted by Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, a Texas A&M alumnus whose district includes the university. He also is the top Democrat from Texas on the Appropriations Committee, chairing the panel's military construction and veteran's committee subcommittee.

Edwards did not respond to a request for an interview. But in a prepared statement, he said the peer review process that federal agencies require universities to go through to get research grants "can sometimes get bogged down in politics and bureaucracy."

Michael O'Quinn, A&M vice president of governmental affairs, said that even though earmarks don't go through the standard grant review process, they still must get approval from the Defense Department.

"It is not like we are throwing these out there and no one at DOD has ever heard about them," said O'Quinn, who worked with Defense Secretary Robert Gates when he was president of the university.

Eric Rosenberg is a reporter for the Hearst Newspapers.

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