Obama pledges to end earmarks

January 7, 2009

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- President-elect Barack Obama pledged to end earmarks, the pet projects lawmakers slip into spending bills.

Most presidents in recent years have sought the power to remove from spending bills the discretionary items lawmakers insert for their pet projects and home districts, often having little to do with the main body of the legislation.

In a news conference Tuesday on his plans to reform the economy, Obama said he would "ban all earmarks," although he did not say how.

Jewish groups that lobby for federal spending on health care and poverty relief often rely on earmarks to advance their programs. NORCs, or naturally occurring retirement communities, the program pioneered by federations that facilitates care for retired people close to their homes, was established through earmarks.

William Daroff, the director of the Washington office of the United Jewish Communities, said he hoped Obama would distinguish between productive earmarks and "pork" -- those that benefit only a few people.

"Throughout the campaign, the president-elect distinguished between bad earmarks -- pork that corrupts our political system -- and good earmarks -- worthy programs that fund necessary social service programs in innovative ways," Daroff told JTA in an e-mail. "I am confident that the President-elect and his team understand this distinction, and will work tirelessly to eliminate corrupt pork, while preserving programs that are funded in above-board and transparent ways."

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Joseph Loundy

01/08/09 01:53 PM

If ‘good earmarks” are so good – why can’t they be approved through the regular budgeting process? Let’s be mature adults and not try to rationalize a hypocritical double standard where earmarks that we like are good and worthy and earmarks that we don’t personally like are “pork”. We need to be better than that.

William Daroff

01/08/09 09:18 PM

The idea behind “earmarks” is that often times Members of Congress know the needs of their districts better than some nameless faceless bureaucrat here in Washington. Our programs that have been funded through earmarks are innovative initiatives that push the envelope of what the establishment would like to fund—because we are ahead of our time.

Clearly there is a difference between an earmark for a $400 million weapons system that the Pentagon doesn’t want and a $400,000 earmark to bring innovative aging-in-place programs in Chicago that help to better the lives of real people.

The key to making the earmark process “kosher” is to make them transparent—to shine bright lighst on them—so that they are not secretly & anonymously added into legislation in the dead of night. Shine bright lights and magnafine glasses on the Jewish community’s earmarks, and you will be proud to find that we answer to a Higher Authority.

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