Washington gold rush: the competition for congressional earmarks

2014-03-17This study examines the process of Congressional earmarking with particular attention to the activities of local earmark recipients. It extends the scholarship on earmarking, in which power is presumed to rest predominantly in Congress, with local recipients serving as supply‐takers. This study considers the manner in which local actors successfully competed for earmarks and addresses the current empirical debate about the role of electoral vulnerability in the institutional supply of earmarks. ❧ The findings suggest that Members of Congress were largely reactive, while local actors were active and entrepreneurial in the search for funding. Members of Congress responded to local requests for funding rather than directed funds. They funded familiar organizations among their primary and re‐election constituencies and engaged in limited, passive credit‐claiming. In contrast, local actors acted as appropriations entrepreneurs and competed vigorously for earmarks using strategies of familiarity, hedging, preference matching and hiring professional lobbyists. Electoral vulnerability did not appear to be associated statistically with earmark attainment. ❧ This pattern of results—Member reactivity, limited credit-claiming, local actor entrepreneurship and lack of support for electorally vulnerable Members—has three implications that contribute to the scholarship on earmarking. First, although Congress structured the earmark game, local actors’ entrepreneurism influenced the ultimate distribution of resources. Second, as information about earmarks spread, and more local actors sought earmarks, Members fell into a distributive trap where earmarking became politically unprofitable due to a deficit from high demand and limited supply. Members found that credit‐claiming lost value in that it highlighted a failure to satisfy demand. Finally, because Members could not satisfy the high level of local demand, risk aversion may have led them not to assist electorally vulnerable colleagues with earmarks