If you hear some lawmakers tell it, earmarks made Washington a well-oiled machine. As special interest spending provisions that were slipped into legislation, they were key to getting votes on bills and keeping members of Congress in line. And that the reason Congress isn’t accomplishing much now is because there is a moratorium on earmarks .

The reality is that Congress passed legislation for a couple centuries largely without the “benefit” of earmarks. There might have been the occasional lawmaker provision, but when we looked at the fiscal year 1970 defense spending bill we found a dozen earmarks, the 1980 bill: 62 earmarks, 2005: more than 2,000. Clearly, earmarks are a more modern phenomena. According to the Congressional Research Service there were just over 3,000 earmarks in fiscal year 1996, and just ten years later in 2005 earmarks quintupled to more than 15,000.

And what does it say about lawmakers, that their vote and principles are so cheap to be purchased for a couple hundred grand spent on a Cowgirl Hall of Fame?  Is that what earmark advocates think about their colleagues and the legislative process?

Others defend earmarking by saying that it still occurs, it's just moved underground and is less transparent than before. That lawmakers are writing (lettermarking) or calling (phonemarking) agency heads and telling them where to spend money that was provided in generic bill provisions. Or lawmakers are cleverly writing provisions that, while appearing neutral, actually direct funds to a particular project or entity. We don't doubt that is occurring; it actually happened when there were earmarks, too. But just like your Mom told you long ago: two wrongs don't make a right. We should be trying to improve the process, not go back to a broken, corrupt model.

It also isn't just about transparency. Let's face it: simply putting data on the web doesn't equal transparency. In 2007, lawmakers started to post some limited data about their earmarks, but form and location means everything. Besides we don't just care about where lawmakers want to spend cash, we want to know why the administration wants to spend, as well.

Lawmakers complain that not having earmarks means they are ceding their constitutional power of the purse to the Executive Branch. That's ridiculous. Congress still drafts and approves every spending bill. And considering that earmarks were never more than one percent of the federal budget, that's not much of a power. Congress needs to exert control – and oversight – over the whole budget instead of only paying attention to a sliver.

That gets to the final point. This isn't just about spending money. It's about spending precious taxpayer money wisely. What taxpayers deserve are merit-based, competitive, or formula systems for spending programs. Congress and the administration need to come together and develop metrics and criteria for these systems and be transparent about what is in the budget and why. Then Congress can conduct oversight (imagine that!) over how the money is spent.

You're never going to fully remove politics and parochialism from spending decisions. But we can force those decisions to be made in the light of the day and not behind the curtains in some smoke-filled room. And that's an important step in making government work.