Channeling old political spirits, Sen. Murray rains money on WA
When the final spending plans to keep the federal government running were released this past week, a few members of Congress pronounced themselves appalled to find they were loaded up with “pork.”
“Earmarks are evil,” wrote a South Carolina Republican, before enumerating lists of pet projects that the conservative House Freedom Caucus labeled as “radioactive woke earmarks.”
“There’s $740,000 for a Latino LGBT organization in Seattle,” complained Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. “When I clicked on their webpage, I got invited to a drag brunch in April!”
Well, it turns out that what briefly became known, in conservative circles, as the “drag brunch earmark” had been added to the national budget by our own U.S. Sen. Patty Murray.
It isn’t funding for a drag brunch, either — it’s to help pay for Entre Hermanos, a gay-support Latino group, to launch an HIV services center and clinic in rural Yakima County.
These facts didn’t do much to cool the rhetoric.
“This bill is full of corrupting earmarks,” thundered Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, adding he tallied that 138 pages of the 1,012-page spending plan were special “pork” projects.
In the end, few senators are getting more of those than Murray. Because she wrote it.
These are the first spending plans passed with Murray at the helm of the uber-powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. It’s the first time in more than four decades that a Washington state politician has apportioned the federal river of money, since the late Sen. Warren Magnuson last chaired the same committee.
“He is scrupulously fair with federal funds,” then-Vice President Walter Mondale quipped about Magnuson in the late 1970s. “One half for Washington state, one half for the rest of the country.”
Ha, I love that quote, even if it wasn’t true. It’s fair to say that Murray in her first budget has channeled Magnuson’s spirit — by embracing the controversial “pork-barreling” exercise of doling out earmarks, and by absolutely raining money on her home state.
Murray alone secured nearly 100 earmarked projects for Washington, totaling a quarter-billion dollars. She spread the love, at least to those who asked, as the 12 appropriations plans are funding more than $12 billion in earmarked projects across most of the 50 states.
Earmarks were banned for about a decade in Washington, after several members were indicted for effectively taking bribes to slip projects into the budget. Today they are back, though members must sign an affidavit saying they have no financial connection to any project they request.
Now they are critiqued less for being corrupt than a waste. When the first batch of six spending bills finally were voted on earlier this month, Lee, of Utah, tried to strip out all the earmarks en masse.
“I was told by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, ‘Sorry, no can do,’” he said.
He was shut down by Murray, in other words.
“I think if senators had to go to the floor and defend some of these … I don’t think they would even offer them,” charged Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas.
But that’s where it gets interesting. Murray took that bait — she went to the Senate floor and, in an 18-minute speech, not only defended her own earmarks, but unabashedly boasted of the billions of dollars she’s channeling to her home state. It was like Magnuson’s ghost.
“I am thrilled to say that the legislation — the bill I wrote with my colleagues — includes more than a billion dollars I helped secure for local projects and programs in Washington state, and delivers a historic $3 billion investment for the Hanford site cleanup,” Murray enthused.
She described her process, which is to meet with constituents, hear their needs — and then bring ‘em the money.
“I take the voices I hear in Washington state — the people I meet — into every room I enter, and write their concerns into every bill I negotiate,” Murray said. “It’s a responsibility I take very seriously — especially as chair of the Appropriations Committee.”
She ticked off her list of projects — some of them the same ones called out by Republicans. Senior housing on Aurora in Seattle ($3 million). A fish ladder on the Howard Hanson Dam ($50 million). Tidal-powered ocean observations at the UW ($5 million).
The latest package, passed early Saturday to avert a government shutdown, includes that Entre Hermanos HIV center, a cop-alternative response team in Everett ($4.5 million), a microbusiness program at the Refugee Artisan Initiative in Seattle ($500,000), suicide barriers on a bridge in Spokane ($400,000), a robotics program in Kent ($511,000) and a long list of child care, transit, environmental and military housing programs.
Murray requested 97 special projects. Those requests were effectively made to herself, as she runs the committee. At least 92 projects with her name attached made it through. In contrast, the four Republican senators from the states of Utah and Idaho got zero projects, as they didn’t request any. (The Republican caucus in the Senate opposes earmarks, though to avoid unilateral disarmament it allows its senators to ask for them.)
Murray’s office released lists showing she’d showered Washington with at least $4.79 billion in funding through mid-March. The package approved early Saturday would add billions more to this figure.
This is total throwback politics. It took 30 years for Murray to get the appropriations gavel. She is wielding it for the home folks right now as if somebody might be about to snatch it away.
Is this good, all this old-fashioned pork-barreling?
It survives because it’s great politics. Defenders say it’s also a good way to convert the peoples’ concerns into government action. Elected politicians, for all their flaws, are more attuned to public spending needs than bureaucrats, the argument goes.
But detractors say the main impulse here is spreading goodies around like butter on toast. It reflects a spending-first mindset that keeps the feds mired in red ink.
Whichever view you take, the news here is that our senior senator continues to be underestimated. I’m reminded of the 1990s saying “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
These are the rules of politics; she didn’t create them. Is she changing them? No. But right now, there’s no one who’s playing the game as it is better than Murray.