Democrats Put Pork Lovers in Academe on a Diet - Congress plans to give close scrutiny to earmarks, freezing them in 2007
By JEFFREY BRAINARD
The Chronicle of Higher Education
January 16, 2007
College officials are bracing for some hard braking on one of their favorite gravy trains. The Democratic majority in Congress plans to increase oversight of earmarks, the noncompetitive grants that members steer to academic institutions, and to decrease sharply their number in the 2007 fiscal year.
The change comes after a dozen years of Congressional generosity with pork-barrel spending, including for research, laboratory construction, and other campus projects. After Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, lawmakers provided a rapidly accelerating amount of money for colleges, universities, and other specific constituents. As the decade rolled on, a federal surplus appeared, and lawmakers viewed the earmarks as vital for helping their districts as well as their own re-election prospects.
But in December senior Democrats announced a moratorium on most earmarks for the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year, which ends in September. Democrats call the step a necessary part of their wider plan to provide level spending for most federal programs for the rest of the year. The move will allow lawmakers to avoid spending weeks completing appropriations bills, most of which were left unfinished last year.
Democratic leaders say they expect earmarking will return in the appropriations bills for the 2008 fiscal year, but only after lawmakers overhaul the controversial practice to improve accountability, and then perhaps only at half the level of projects paid for in 2006.
All of that means different things for different colleges. Some that have relied heavily on this pork-barrel spending say they are scrambling to bridge the gap for this fiscal year to avoid letting go staff and disrupting research. Officials at other institutions project a modest effect, felt mostly as a postponement of planned construction. Still, these officials are nervous about the future availability of earmarks.
Although many are frustrated with the moratorium for 2007, even some officials whose colleges have reaped bounties in earmarks concede that there could be an upside if it pushes faculty members to find new sources of money — as critics of earmarking have been saying those scholars should have done a long time ago.
"We're up to the challenge, but we'll be hurt in the short run," says Ronald W. Smith, interim vice president for research at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. There, a moratorium on earmarks for research on renewable energy might force as many as 100 researchers and students to find new projects.
"It's absolutely a big hit," Mr. Smith says.
New Scrutiny of Earmarks
For academe as a whole, a suspension of earmarks will take away a significant chunk of money: Congress provided more than $2-billion to 716 institutions in 2003, the last year for which The Chronicle estimated a grand total. And the pace of earmarking appears not to have declined since.
The practice has remained controversial in academe because it circumvents the open competitions traditionally used by federal agencies to distribute federal grants.
The blow in 2007 will be softened for some universities because Congress approved two appropriations bills last fall, to provide money for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Both measures contained tens of millions in academic earmarks.
What's more, the moratorium on earmarks at other agencies may have some wiggle room: Lawmakers are expected not to forbid federal agencies from choosing to finance projects that have been earmarked in past years, said a Congressional staff member who spoke last week on condition of anonymity.
However, the agencies might have little money to spare because appropriations committees will probably divert billions of dollars spent last year on earmarked projects to pay for other spending priorities. Those could include the Pell Grant program, which Democrats have promised to expand, and a $3-billion shortfall in veterans' health programs. The cash might also go simply to help the agencies keep pace with inflation and avoid laying off their staff members, Congressional aides said.
Congress could make a final decision to continue financing most programs in 2007 at their 2006 levels by the end of January. (For now, Congress is continuing the level financing only through mid-February.)
Assuming that Congress resumes earmarks in 2008, colleges may find them harder to get. Democrats won control of Congress in the November elections in part by promising to clean up ethical lapses, including abuse of the earmarking process. The Democrats' ability to preserve and expand their gains in the 2008 election is expected to depend in part on how they deliver on that promise.
This month the House of Representatives moved toward greater accountability by approving a bill to make public the details of each future earmark's sponsors, intended recipient, and purpose. The Senate is considering a similar bill.
As part of the Democrats' effort to control overall federal spending, the number of earmarks could fall by half starting in 2008, said the new House majority leader, Steny H. Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, this month. President Bush also proposed that goal this month. (So far he has not vetoed any appropriations bills because of earmarks or any other reason.)
Aside from the number of earmarks, the switch in party control will almost certainly skew the geographic distribution of earmarks in 2008 toward states represented by senior Democrats.
While members of both parties have shown an appetite for pork-barrel projects, the majority of them have historically gone to states represented by the party in control.
Some observers expect that the number of earmarks remaining will be concentrated among districts represented by members of the appropriations committees, who have in past years secured significantly more academic earmarks than have other lawmakers. (Indeed, some House Republicans have defended the explosive growth in pork-barrel spending under their watch as fair because their party consciously chose to spread the largess nationally.)
Heavy Reliance on Pork
But for some academic institutions like the University of Nevada at Las Vegas that have relied heavily on earmarks, the moratorium for the rest of 2007 will force some hard adjustments.
Las Vegas's quest for the set-asides has been supported by a powerful ally in Congress, Sen. Harry M. Reid, the Nevada Democrat who became majority leader this month.
The university was scheduled to receive at least $37-million in earmarks in the 2007 fiscal year, under an appropriations bill that was approved in committee last year but never enacted. Las Vegas received roughly the same sum in the 2006 version of that bill, a larger amount than most other universities.
Compared with other universities' take of earmarked funds, Las Vegas's share represented a disproportionately large portion of its overall research budget, which reached about $100-million from all sources in 2006.
The earmarked funds for 2007 were to continue a range of renewable-energy research projects. One, for example, would use solar energy and photovoltaic cells to economically derive hydrogen from water, for use in hydrogen-powered cars.
Nevada is naturally suited for such work because of its large open spaces and frequent sunshine, Mr. Smith says.
The university started the research about five years ago largely using Congressional earmarks as seed money, and earmarks have continued to provide the bulk of the support.
Mr. Smith offers the same justification for earmarking offered by many other college officials who have sought and received such funds: His researchers have worthy ideas for research projects but lack the money for equipment and other needs, like supporting students as assistants, to carry the projects out. As a result, the institution cannot consistently compete with larger, older research universities in the Darwinian struggle for competitively awarded federal research grants. Some projects at Las Vegas that were begun with earmarked funds have gone on to win competitively awarded grants from the Energy Department, he says.
The effect of an earmark moratorium probably will not be felt until the fall, because the university is still spending some of the set-aside money it was allocated in appropriations for 2006, says Oliver A. Hemmers, an assistant research professor who directs an office at Las Vegas that manages the research.
The moratorium's burden would fall on about 50 faculty members and research scientists, a handful of whom are supported entirely by the earmarked funds and may have to transfer to other, non-earmarked projects. About 50 postdoctoral researchers and graduate students would also have to complete their appointments early or switch study topics.
But, Mr. Hemmers and Mr. Smith say, the energy research will continue in some form. In part to make up for the lost funds, the university plans to competitively award faculty members about $500,000 in additional institutional money for research in 2007 — not enough to plug the expected shortfall, but a start. The money will be open to all faculty researchers as seed money to develop competitive research projects, not just those in renewable energy.
Replacing Dollars
Encouraging self-sufficiency is something "we need to do anyway, and we have been, but we are greatly accelerating that" since the Democrats moved to cut earmarks, Mr. Smith says.
He tells faculty members that the earmarked money "is a wonderful blessing, but we can't grow dependent on it," he says.
The university will also seek some directed funds for research from Nevada's Legislature to tide over the programs for 2007, Mr. Smith says, although the prospects are uncertain.
For other institutions, the effects of the moratorium earmarks will be less pronounced, but still felt.
Eastern Michigan University, for example, will try again in 2008 for a $500,000 earmark to help educate workers laid off from the automobile industry and other companies in its area, says Brian D. Anderson, a university official who oversees its requests for earmarks. The money, for training, tutoring, and counseling, was promised in a Senate appropriations bill for 2007 that was never enacted.
"It's something that the university is already doing, but this would enhance our ability to do it," Mr. Anderson says.
However, the university will get a separate earmark for $1-million, included in the Defense appropriations bill for 2007, for a project meant to develop new kinds of textiles resistant to contamination from a chemical or biological attack that could be used in soldiers' uniforms.
At the University of Southern Mississippi, officials hope they will succeed in persuading federal agencies to continue to finance earmarked projects included in prior years' appropriations bills.
The university, which obtained $102-million from all sources for research in 2006, was promised about $30-million in set-asides in all of the 2007 appropriations bills, and has been one of the top recipients of such funds in past years. Most of the 2007 money was for equipment to help researchers develop better polymers and to improve the aquaculture of shrimp, and only about 10 percent was slated for salaries.
Bridging the Gap
The institution can probably tap other sources of money in the short term to minimize any disruption to the work, says Cecil D. Burge, vice president for research and economic development at the University of Southern Mississippi. But he predicts that officials at the Commerce Department and other federal agencies will not risk incurring the wrath of Congress members by diverting money formerly spent on these projects to other priorities. Besides, he says, his university seeks earmarked funds only for projects that it knows fit a priority of the agency directed to provide the funds.
The new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, is renowned for his support of earmarks — although he also announced the earmark moratorium. One of Mississippi's senators, Thad Cochran, is the panel's senior Republican.
"Those agencies know that in many cases, they'll go back to that appropriations committee in next year's budget," Mr. Burge says. "I may be naïve, but I simply refuse to believe" that earmarks will just go away "cold turkey," he says.
Rather than rely solely on the good will of the Agriculture Department to continue financing earmarked projects, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges hopes to persuade lawmakers to specifically preserve about $180-million in such funds in 2007. Earmarks for agricultural research have been somewhat less controversial than others because Congress has historically provided substantial amounts of agricultural-research money through population-based formulas rather than competitive awards.
To spare the $180-million from the earmark moratorium, Congress could shift the money into these so-called formula funds, suggests Jennifer T. Poulakidas, the association's vice president for Congressional affairs.
For many colleges, the moratorium for 2007 also means that they will have little to show for the millions they collectively spent on Washington lobbyists last year to help them obtain earmarks. A growing number of colleges have hired federal lobbyists in recent years, with 558 spending nearly $62-million in 2003, mostly to seek earmarks.
