The Administrative Costs of Congressional Earmarking: The Case of the Office of Naval Research

• Author: James D. Savage
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.01991.x
• Date: 01 May 2009
• Published date: 01 May 2009

James D. Savage

University of Virginia

 e Administrative Costs of Congressional Earmarking:

 e Case of the Of‌f‌i ce of Naval Research

Fostering Fiscal

Responsibility:

International,

Federal, and Local

Government

Perspectives

James D. Savage is a professor in the

Department of Politics at the University of

Virginia and a visiting professor at the Naval

Post Graduate School. He is the author of

Making the EMU: The Politics of Budgetary

Surveillance and the Enforcement of

Maastricht

(Oxford University Press, 2005);

Funding Science in America: Congress, Uni-

versities, and the Politics of the Academic

Pork Barrel

(Cambridge University Press,

1999); and

Balanced Budgets and American

Politics

(Cornell University Press, 1988).

E-mail: jds2y@virginia.edu

Discussions about congressional earmarking often focus on

their direct costs in the federal government’s appropriations

bills.  is article shows that this conventional view neglects

the administrative costs of earmarking by examining the

extensive transaction and opportunity costs that come with

the political, budgetary, and programmatic management

of these earmarked projects in Congress and in the Of‌f‌i ce

of Naval Research. One policy conclusion from this study

is that the executive branch should make these costs

transparent, as they remain largely hidden from public

discussion and the consideration of the federal budget.

Congressional earmarking of the federal budget

remains a staple of American politics. Press

reports of such infamous earmarks as the

Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere” and the resignation and

imprisonment of Representative Randy Cunningham

(R-CA) for bribes taken in exchange for earmarks in

the defense appropriations bill inf‌l uenced the 2006

congressional elections. Despite newly passed ethics

and transparency legislation, earmarks continue to

proliferate in the federal government’s 12 appro-

priations bills. Congressional scholars explain that

earmarks help members gain reelection, while some

academics also approvingly report that members

employ earmarks to “grease the wheels” of the legisla-

tive process.  e costs of individual earmarks, scholars

claim, are hidden from the public by spreading them

among all taxpayers, thus contributing to federal

def‌i cit spending (Ellwood and

Patashnik 1993; Evans 2004;

Shepsle and Weingast 1981;

Weingast, Shepsle, and Johnsen

1981). Press coverage of

earmarking and a voluminous

Congress-directed literature

in political science, however,

generally ignore the administra-

tive costs and demands placed

on executive branch agencies

that are required to manage

these congressionally mandated

projects. When the costs of

earmarking are considered in these congressionally

focused studies, they are viewed almost exclusively in

terms of the direct budgetary cost of specif‌i c

earmarks, not the externalities that must be absorbed

by the agencies (Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina 1987;

De Figueiredo and Silverman 2006; Ferejohn 1974;

Law and Tonon 2006; Savage, 1991; Stein and

Bickers 1997).

 is study attempts to redress the inattention to these

administrative costs by analyzing the ef‌f ect of earmark-

ing on one federal agency, the U.S. Navy’s Of‌f‌i ce of

Naval Research (ONR). What we f‌i nd by examining

the ONR is that earmarking does indeed place exten-

sive political, budgetary, and programmatic demands

on the agency, requiring it to absorb a number of

opportunity, transaction, and direct costs, with little or

no compensation from the navy or the Department of

Defense (DOD), and certainly not from Congress.

Earmarking is an important political and budgetary

issue. For f‌i scal year (FY) 2006, which perhaps stands

as the pinnacle of the earmarking frenzy, members of

the U.S. House of Representatives submitted more

than 33,000 project requests to the House Appropria-

tions Committee. Of these requests, approximately

10,000 were funded, for a total of $29 billion. As

shown in table 1, the defense appropriations bill

included 2,822 earmarks costing an estimated

$14.9 billion, or 28 percent

of all earmarked projects and

51 percent of all earmarked

dollars.  ese f‌i gures represent

a substantial increase in both

the number and cost of these

projects during the past decade.

 ese numbers also ref‌l ect

signif‌i cant tension between the

federal government’s executive

and legislative branches. Every

president since Ronald Reagan

has denounced earmarking

because of its cost and because

Earmarking is an important

political and budgetary issue.

For f‌i scal year (FY) 2006, which

perhaps stands as the pinnacle

of the earmarking frenzy,

members of the U.S. House of

Representatives submitted more

than 33,000 project requests

to the House Appropriations

Committee.

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