Congressional leaders have promised a two-year moratorium on earmarks. Some in Congress are even trying to get the money back for orphaned earmarks, i.e., earmarks that have not yet been spent. There are usually lots of orphaned transportation projects because the states are not really interested in doing earmarks that override their own priorities.
It remains to be seen how serious Congress is about this. The hexennial surface transportation reauthorization should take place in the next two years, and it is hard to believe Congress will resist putting earmarks into it. While no earmarks were included in transportation reauthorization bills before 1982, the number grew rapidly after then, reaching more than 7,000 in the 2005 bill.
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Will Congress simply agree to whatever the FTA says are the best projects? Or will it override the FTA recommendations? We’ll know in a few months how serious Congress is about the no-earmarks rule.
Earmarks for transportation projects are very interesting. There is a huge amount of politics involved in any large transportation project decision (even though some on this website seem to think it is just physics). The “professional” process requires many endorsements and prioritization by local elected and appointed officials, and anyone who knows local politics knows is a far tougher arena than national politics.
In addition, the formulas used to allocate federal transportation funds is itself clearly a political decision. There is no law of physics proving that funds should be allocated per capita, per mile of existing highway, per congestion formula, per carbon footprint formula, per developed property acres, per undeveloped property acres, per future growth formula, per need for development formula, etc.
It seems logical that a federal level political decision is needed on interstate transportation needs, which might include projects wholly within one state. The federal decision can be made by unelected political appointees of the party in power, who might have better ties to one state government versus another, or by a fully elected Congress where power is spread by byzantine rules and secret back door deals.
It seems like it is a choice of which process is the best of the worst.
Didn’t Obama vow to veto legislation with earmarks in the SOTU address?