The Washington Post has a good article about the growing use of earmarks by members of Congress to get funding for pet projects for their states or congressional districts. While the Post is right to draw attention to this abuse of the appropriation process, it badly misleads readers because it fails to put these numbers in a context where they could be understood. For example, it tells us that Nany Pelosi arranged to get $25 million for a waterfont improvement project for her district. Representative Dana Rohrabacher arranged to get $2.4 billion for 10 Boeing planes that the Pentagon doesn't want. It also notes appropriations of $25 million for spinach, $60 million for salmon fisheries and $5 million for aquaculture. Whatever the merits of these earmarks, they are not big items in the budget, which the Post could have made clear to readers by putting them in some context. This could be done by either expressing the appropriations as shares of the budget and/or dollars per taxpayers. So, Speaker Pelosi's waterfront project is equal to 0.001 percent of the budget or 8 cents per taxpayer. If the planes are purchased over a three year period, Representative Rohrbacher's earmark comes to 0.03 percent of projected spending or $8 per taxpayer. The spinach, salmon, and aquaculture are 0.001 percent (8 cents per taxpayer), 0.002 percent (20 cents per taxpayer), and 0.0002 percent (2 cents per taxpayer), respectively. The public is very badly informed about the budget -- the media bears much of the blame. Is there some reason they refuse to express budget numbers in a way that the typical reader can understand them? [Correction: This is not a good article. It is good reporting when reporters expose members of Congress of either party abusing their power. On the other hand, it is irresponsible journalism when reporters pass along allegations from obviously partisan sources, without independently verifying them. In this case, the article reports that Pelosi's family stood to directly profit from the waterfromt project based on an assertion that appeared on a Republican website without making an effort to verify its accuracy. Thanks, J.W.]
--Dean Baker
