An MQ-9 Predator B, an unmanned aerial vehicle, is pictured. The secret about earmarks

Shh! There’s a secret about earmarks: Eliminating them won’t save taxpayers one dime. Instead, the money will get turned back to President Barack Obama so he can direct spending as he sees fit.

In light of this, it is no wonder that Obama is willing to support the ban and join the Republican senators who, for years, have demagogued about congressional earmarks. On Election Day the American people sent the message to Washington that it is time to reduce government spending, repeal Obamacare and cut taxes. A moratorium on earmarks would only serve to increase the amount of money Obama has to spend.


This year, the House, in its earmark ban, defined “earmarks” as authorizations and appropriations — precisely what Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states Congress is supposed to do.

So a ban on earmarks doesn’t save one dime. It does, however, do three things: 1) It trashes the Constitution and violates our oath of office; 2) it cedes Congress’s power to authorize and appropriate to the president, and 3) it gives cover to big spending.

For many years now, there have been some members of Congress who have decried earmarks to hide their real voting record on fiscal issues. In other words, they vote for huge spending increases and then blast earmarks. As a result of their incessant demagoguery, just the term “earmark” has become a dirty word for many voters.

It is hard to imagine that our Founders were misguided when they gave members of Congress, those closest to the will of the people, the power of the purse under Article I of the Constitution.

An across-the-board ban has the unintended consequence of eliminating useful spending. Improved armor for our soldiers and unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator drone are just a few examples of worthy congressional earmarks that have improved our national defense and would never have been funded by any administration.

To be clear, there are many earmarks that should be defeated. But we should defeat them based on their substance — not because they are earmarks.

Others call earmarks a gateway drug that needs to be eliminated to demonstrate that we are serious about fiscal restraint. There is just one problem with that: It’s not true.

Earmarks have steadily decreased over the past few years, according to the Office of Management and Budget and federal spending watchdog groups.

So while the total number of earmarks and the overall dollar amount of earmarks have been declining, no one argues with the fact that the Obama deficit has ballooned to $3 trillion in two years. Earmarks, then, are hardly a gateway drug, a symptom of federal spending run amok or even an underlying cause of our fiscal problems.

It is inconceivable that newly elected conservatives would decide to cede Congress’s authority to Obama. The last time Congress did this was with the stimulus bill. With no congressional earmarks, the stimulus bill still resulted in hundreds of outrageous expenditures that were doled out through presidential earmarks by unelected government officials.

At Obama’s direction, millions in federal dollars were spent, literally, for a clown show in Pennsylvania, a deer underpass in Wyoming, a Colorado dragon boat festival and a storytelling festival in Utah — just to name a few.

So let’s get serious. Instead of ceding Congress’s constitutional authority to the president, we should hold Obama accountable and be responsive to our constituents. I intend to introduce legislation on Nov. 15 to do just that.

Let’s address the real problems — the deficit, the debt and Obamacare — and get to work saving America.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) was rated the most conservative senator in 2009 by National Journal and is consistently ranked most conservative by other groups.

This article tagged under: Earmarks

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