Senator Lindsey Graham's ability to attack earmarks in the very same breath that he declares "I should have the ability as a United States senator to direct money back to my state as long as it’s transparent and it makes sense" might indicate that he's a hypocrite, or perhaps not a native English speaker. The fact that Senator Jon Kyl and other Republicans have fallen into the same trap supports the first conclusion, since it's hard to imagine the Republicans sending that many non-English speakers to Congress. But watching Graham with David Gregory yesterday, I realized that eliminating earmarks might pose a real danger to him and his colleagues. As policy, I'm as indifferent to the issue of earmarks as Tom Mann. They're inconsequential. Not only do they represent less than one percent of the federal budget, eliminating them wouldn't even reduce federal spending by even that tiny amount, or any amount at all, since earmarks by definition simply tag the spending in an already established pot of money, such as the Community Development Block Grant. The only question is whether decisions about funding individual projects should be made by Congress -- through earmarks -- or by a supposedly apolitical administrative process. Except for the tremendous inequities between states with clout on the Appropriations Committees and those without, Graham's argument that politicians have a legitimate role in deciding which large projects in their states should be priorities makes sense. There's nothing partisan about earmarks -- Republicans do it, Democrats do it, and if you were a member of Congress, you'd do it, too. But for the moment, Republicans are far more dependent than Democrats on their ability to take some credit for federally funded projects. In the world with earmarks, Lindsay Graham is able to stand against the president on stimulus, on the budget, on Iraq, on health care. And then he's able to go home, cut a ribbon, get his picture in the paper, and tell everyone that he delivered the money for the new Myrtle Beach Convention Center. But in a world without earmarks, what does Lindsay Graham bring home? Just words, and great stories about how he fought bravely against health care and economic stimulus. Whereas a Democrat in a world without earmarks will be able to go home, ideally, and tell her constituents that she supported a popular president, that she helped rescue the economy, that she's moving us toward universal health care. Congress works on two levels -- a game of big decisions with lasting consequences, and a small-ball game, mainly concentrated in Appropriations. The big game has become almost entirely partisan, and for the moment almost all the Republicans are opting out of it entirely, just as they did in 1993, whereas the small-ball game has always been indifferent to party and ideology. Anyone can play -- even those who claim to denounce it. (That's partly a matter of Appropriations-Committee custom and partly just that in a system with ten thousand small favors to be exchanged, there's room for everyone.) The small-ball game, being "Senator Pothole," is a form of protection for legislators who can't or won't participate in the bigger decisions. Take away the small-ball game, of which earmarks are a significant part, and Republican members of Congress and Senators face a bit of a dilemma: Are they really willing to spend 2009 and 2010, years of extraordinary hardship for their constituents, with nothing positive to boast about? And if they aren't, it's one more reason to expect that they might rethink their reflexive policy of massive resistance to the Obama agenda. -- Mark Schmitt
