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For your advanced reading before the budget: (They ALL do it!!!)

A Spectator’s Guide to Earmark Debate Terminology

By David Clarke, CQ Staff

Technically, an earmark is something put on the ear of a farm animal to show who owns the livestock.

But on Capitol Hill these days, the term is derogatory, divisive and sometimes confusing. In legislative debate, no earmark is considered good, but some are considered especially bad.

Many of the rule changes being debated in an effort to bring greater “transparency” to the process by which lawmakers direct money are meant to overcome lawmakers’ reluctance to acknowledge responsibility for earmarks — until they are ready to claim credit for bringing federal money into their states or districts.

Here is an unofficial guide to the meaning of phrases tossed around during the partisan debate over earmarks:

Regular Earmarks

The old-fashioned, straightforward designation of funds through bill text or language in a committee report for a specific federal project, such as continued procurement of an obsolete weapons system; or for a local project, such as a road, community center or research program at a university.

Critics deride such directed funding as “pork-barrel spending” — but no member of Congress ever lost an election by bringing home federal funding.

Administration Earmarks

The White House is calling for a crackdown on earmarks. However, Democrats counter that the Bush administration also earmarks funding in its budget proposals and spending decisions.

For instance, House appropriators say a request by President Bush for $35 million for a chemical demilitarization project in Colorado is the equivalent of an earmark.

Airdropped Earmarks

This sounds like a military maneuver. The imagery is dramatic, but the tactic depends on timing, not gravity.

Much of last week’s debate involved Republican complaints about a Democratic plan to withhold House earmarks until fiscal 2008 spending bills have passed the House and gone to conference with the Senate. “Airdropping” earmarks would prevent critics from trying to delete the provisions, since conference reports on bills cannot be amended on the floor.

Hidden Earmarks

The fiscal 2007 omnibus funding law (PL 110-5 :simplePopup('displaylawcard.do?lawNumbe r=5&congress=110','billCard',680,430);> ) enacted earlier this year contained no apparent earmarks. Yet Republicans maintain that it effectively included earmarks because it would allow continued spending under previous multi-year funding designations.

An example is Iowa Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley’s often-criticized $50 million earmark in the fiscal 2004 omnibus (PL 108-199 :simplePopup('displaylawcard.do?lawNumbe r=199&congress=108','billCard',680,430);> ) for a rainforest research project in his state.

Gateway Drug

In the view of some conservatives, one seemingly modest earmark in a one-year spending bill can lead to years of expensive outlays. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is credited with first making an analogy often associated with marijuana use.

For example, after funds are earmarked for building a new research center, that facility will need government cash in later years for projects and operations.

Legislatively Directed Spending

During a June 12 news conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., offered her solution for clarifying the discussion of earmarks: “Why don’t we just leave this room today forgetting the word earmark? This is legislatively directed spending, as opposed to executive spending. In the absence of legislative-directed spending, you have appropriations bills that are totally dictated by the White House.”

Nice try. But the term earmark is unlikely to go away.