Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) told a local newspaper this week that she supports a ban on earmarks – but then turned around and said that the definition of an earmark should be changed to exclude funds for transportation projects. It’s like a drunk swearing off the booze, but only if alcohol is redefined so as not to include beer.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Hot Dish Politics Blog (11/15/2010):

Rep. Michele Bachmann supports a ban on earmarks in Congress, but she thinks that some transportation projects should redefined so they aren’t considered earmarks.

Bachmann told the Star Tribune she supports a “redefinition” of what an earmark is, because, she said: “Advocating for transportation projects for ones district in my mind does not equate to an earmark.”

“I don’t believe that building roads and bridges and interchanges should be considered an earmark,” Bachmann said. “There’s a big difference between funding a tea pot museum and a bridge over a vital waterway.”

Bachmann is catching flack for her statement, but it’s not just the political cowardice of the whole thing that strikes us. Transportation funding is actually one of the most egregious illustrations of the many problems with the earmarking process. Earmarks are an enormous problem for the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the various state and regional entities that have to deal with their funds being sliced and diced at the Congressional level. Because these funds are doled out based on seniority and committee membership, the most powerful lawmakers get the biggest share of the cash, no matter if those funds are going to the most important projects or not.

Often, the earmarked funds are a tiny down-payment on a much larger project. If the project isn’t a priority, the state either forfeits the earmarked dollars or spends it on the designated project at the expense of other, higher priorities. The problem has become so bad that at least one state’s DOT – Alaska, of all places, the grand champion of earmark wealth – has created a policy that it will not accept earmarked funds for projects that it cannot feasibly anticipate full funding for in the near future. A sensible policy, and one that well illustrates how much of a problem transportation earmarks have become.

A DOT Inspector General (IG) report concluded that in FY2006 more than 14% of all the funds directed to highways, aviation, and transit were earmarked, and that the vast majority of that funding bypassed either DOT’s review and selection process or the planning and programming processes of the individual states. In other words, this money is not being rewarded on a merit basis but at the discretion of the lawmakers who are writing the bills.

The IG concluded, among other things, that lower priority earmarked projects were being funded at the expense of higher priority projects that had not received earmarks; that earmarked funds were going to projects that would otherwise be ineligible for funding; and that earmarks reduce funding from the states’ core transportation program.

And transportation earmarks create just the same pay-to-pay politics as any other earmarks. As evidence, take the Coconut Road earmark for an interchange in Florida, secured by then-chairman of the House transportation committee Don Young (R-AK) to reward a campaign contributor. Since Young wrote the bill, he was able to secure an earmark far from his Alaska home, by slipping it into a bill after the final version had been approved by the House and Senate. Power wins over priority.

Rep. Bachmann would have us believe that a “bridge over a vital waterway” is a more worthy earmark recipient than a tea pot museum. We’d like to remind the Congresswoman, however, that the poster child of earmarks, the now infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” is somebody’s bridge over somebody’s vital waterway. So the simple fact is this: transportation earmarks are no more worthy of protection than any other earmark.