> **FOUNDERS VS. PORK**
>
> *Sen. Coburn: Founding Fathers Would*
>
> *Have Abhorred Earmarking*
>
> ![](media/image1.png){width="2.6666666666666665in" height="2.65625in"}

Dear Colleague:

I would like to draw your attention to a recent piece by Senator Tom
Coburn (R-OK) featured on *National Review Online,* which seeks to
debunk the myth that the current earmarking process would somehow have
met with approval from the country's Founding Fathers.

Earmark supporters often attempt to defend the practice by citing
Congress' constitutionally derived powers of the purse, and some have
even extrapolated these powers to include support from the Founding
Fathers for the opaque and wasteful earmark process. As Dr. Coburn
writes: "an examination of the actual writings of the Founding Fathers,
however, clearly demonstrates that our country's Founders would have
abhorred, not supported, the secretive practice of parochial
earmarking."

I urge my colleagues to join a growing number of Republicans and
Democrats who are making the right choice and forsaking the practice of
earmarking. Taxpayers deserve better than another year of business as
usual on Capitol Hill.

> Sincerely,
>
> JEFF FLAKE
>
> Member of Congress

**Founders vs. Pork**\
*From the beginning, we knew it was wrong.*\
\
By Tom Coburn, National Review Online, March 13, 2008

The debate about whether to enact a one-year moratorium on congressional
earmarks has provoked some interesting historical and constitutional
arguments from the earmark-industrial complex. According to Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, "The Founding Fathers would be cringing to
hear people talking about eliminating earmarks." Members of the
congressional appropriations committees regularly cite Article I of the
Constitution as proof of their right to send taxpayer money back home to
fund teapot museums, swimming pools, and bridges to nowhere. An
examination of the actual writings of the Founding Fathers, however,
clearly demonstrates that **our country's Founders would have abhorred,
not supported, the secretive practice of parochial earmarking.**\
\
Even though he firmly believed that the power of appropriating federal
money belonged only to Congress and that it was necessary to have a
clear delineation of authority between the executive and legislative
branches of government, Thomas Jefferson also fervently argued against
the use of federal funding for local projects. For example, in a 1796
letter to James Madison regarding federally funded local projects,
**Jefferson wrote, "\[O\]ther revenues will soon be called into their
aid, and it will be the source of eternal scramble among the members,
who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always
get the most who are the meanest."** Anyone who has observed the recent
tantrums of those who have had their pork challenged knows that
Jefferson's statement was sadly prophetic.\
\
Jefferson was not alone in his worry about the corrupting influence of
money and political power. In a 1792 letter to Alexander Hamilton
conveying what he believed to be the public's perceptions of government,
George Washington cited worries about the "increase in the mass of the
debt," which had "furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion
of the legislature, as turns the balance between the honest voters\[.\]"
Hamilton, who famously clashed with Jefferson and Madison on fiscal
matters, responded that "\[e\]very session the question whether the
annual \[funding\] provision should be continued, would be an occasion
of pernicious caballing and corrupt bargaining."\
\
The importance of transparency in government operations was also
recognized by Jefferson. In 1808 he wrote, **"The same prudence, which,
in private life, would forbid our paying our money for unexplained
projects, forbids it in the disposition of public moneys."** And yet, in
the United States Senate, senators are freely able to distribute
earmarks to organizations from which they solicit campaign contributions
without ever having to actually disclose the names of those
organizations. Try as they might, it is difficult for earmark
enthusiasts to argue that the author of the Declaration of Independence
would today endorse the allocation of taxpayer money on "unexplained
projects."\
\
Jefferson also astutely recognized that large amounts of spending would
inevitably lead to outside efforts to redirect that money. **He wrote in
1801 about the need "to reform the waste of public money, and thus drive
away the vultures who prey upon it\[.\]"** The recent lobbying and
earmark scandals have proven that Jefferson's worries were justified. As
federal spending has skyrocketed, so has earmarking. And as earmarking
has exploded, so has the earmark lobbying industry that seeks to
redirect funding toward its clients and away from American taxpayers.
Convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff called the congressional
appropriations committee an "earmark favor factory" precisely because he
knew that he could influence the allocation of taxpayer dollars via his
allocation of congressional campaign contributions.\
\
Although our Founding Fathers disagreed on many matters large and small,
they were united in their skepticism of a secretive, backroom process to
allocate taxpayer funding. George Washington noted in 1792 that no
mischief is "so afflicting and fatal to every honest hope, as the
corruption of the legislature." Congressional approval ratings are now
at record lows because taxpayers do not believe that we are being honest
or open about how we spend their money.\
\
Instead of offering dubious defenses of the propriety of earmarking,
congressional leaders should seek to restore the confidence of the
American public in their ability to govern by reacquainting themselves
with the very document upon which our system is based. According to the
Senate's own website, the first bill ever passed by the United States
Senate created a simple 14-word oath of office for all federal lawmakers
and civil servants: "I do solemnly swear that I will support the
Constitution of the United States." Conspicuously absent from that oath
is any mention of the so-called duty of members of Congress to send
taxpayer-funded projects to their hometowns.\
\
The revisionist history justifying today's earmark favor factory is
hardly the fault of the Senate Majority Leader or even his party. Sadly,
this idea has currency in the party of limited government in which
members should know that the effective legislator is not one who sends
money back to his or her state through pork, but the one who prevents
money from leaving their state in the first place.\
\
Congress operated for 200 years prior to the creation of the modern
earmark favor factory and American taxpayers will do just fine once it's
gone.

--- *Dr. Tom Coburn (R.) is a United States senator from Oklahoma.*