Ray LaHood defends the “earmark” system in today’s Journal Star:

He said some high-profile problems with earmarking, such as the so-called “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, are projects “put in at the 11th hour by some powerful person, and nobody ever sees it before it’s voted on.” Such appropriations are “a perversion of the system,” he said.

He says later that he approves of earmarks as long as they’re done in a “transparent way” — meaning “people get to see it before they vote on it.”

Notice he doesn’t mention anything about reforming the system.  He wants to keep it in place, even if there is some abuse, because it brings in the pork.  He cites the Lincoln Presidential Library (Springfield) and a new law enforcement communications center (Lincoln) as examples of how he used earmarks to benefit Illinois.  He didn’t mention his recent earmark that gave Firefly Energy a $2.5 million military contract.

CNN recently reported (“Can this elephant be cleaned up?” by Perry Bacon Jr., Mike Allen, January 18, 2006; 7:16 p.m. EST, cnn.com, permalink gone):

Lobbyists are paid to land earmarks; Abramoff used them to get money for his tribal clients. The number of those earmarks mushroomed from close to 2,000 in a highway bill in 1998 to more than 6,000 in that bill last year. Practitioners say the boom is a major factor in the doubling of the number of lobbyists in Washington over the past five years, to almost 35,000, and Bush points to the popular practice as one of the reasons curtailing federal spending is so difficult.

Bottom line, earmarks are power. They allow congressmen to push money to their districts — sometimes benefitting specific private companies (like Firefly).  None of the senators, LaHood included, want to give that up. I understand that.

But some senators are talking about significant reform of the earmark system — beyond just getting to see the legislation before they vote on it.  Boehner, according to the CNN report, wants to “try to prevent federal dollars from going to private entities for exclusively private purposes,” for example.  Another plan “would identify the sponsors of earmarks and force members to defend them, eliminating the many mysterious entries that now bristle in the budget.”  McCain favors limits on earmarks as well.

In the Journal Star article, LaHood comes across as a defender rather than a reformer of the earmark system.  His reason:  it’s bringing home the bacon to central Illinois.  That’s not a very compelling defense when you consider every other congressman is bringing home the bacon to their states, districts, and private companies as well.  It’s a broken system, and LaHood should be working to reform it instead of defending it.