Loading ...« Screwed by SGA… | Home | Law Schools have CR groups? »
Parochial political culture
By sage of monticello | May 1, 2008
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has written a very interesting article in which is urges movement towards a culture of oversight and away from a culture of parochialism.
Real change is not shifting earmarks from Republicans to Democrats, but is in getting rid of earmarks (and their corrupting effect) all together.
Bits and pieces of Sen. Coburn’s article are published below. To read the entire article, click here.
For more than a decade, conventional wisdom in Washington has said that government spending can’t be reduced in any meaningful way. Congress’ reactions to our lagging economy have once again shown how quick fixes and the short-term politics of crisis rule the day…
…parochialism – is dominated by politicians who have exchanged their oath to the Constitution for an oath to careerism, the philosophy of governing to win the next election above all else.
In the parochial Congress, which has prevailed since the early 1990s, members are supposed to compete against one another for earmarks. While politicians like to depict the states or districts they represent as “winners” in this process the fact is every state and every taxpayer lose.
For every allegedly worthwhile earmark in one state, taxpayers finance wasteful projects in 49 other states. The system is not designed to serve local communities, but to allow politicians to take political credit for spending your money.
In the other culture – the culture of oversight – the effective legislator is not the one who brings money back to their state but the one who keeps dollars from leaving their state in the first place.
In this culture, politicians serve local interest by protecting the national interest. Politicians don’t look for new ways to take credit for new projects. Instead, they do the hard work of making sure programs that are already up and running work as intended…
…For instance, in 2007, members of Congress requested nearly 32,000 earmarks. Of those requests, 12,000 received funding. Yet, for every oversight hearing held by the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, the committee processed nearly a thousand earmarks.
Congress’ lack of oversight is a major cause of the more than $300 billion in annual waste in government, which is about ten percent of our entire budget (the actual amount of our annual waste is probably much higher).
In terms of scope, $300 billion could pay for the annual costs of our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan more than two times over. Our $300 billion in annual waste also exceeds the Gross Domestic Products of 85 percent of all nations on earth, including Israel, Ireland and Finland.
Topics: corruption, Tom Coburn |
May 1st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I’m so proud he’s from my state!