By: Jen Dimascio

How long does it take for Congress to stray from an anti-earmark diet?

About a year.

After many ethical breaches, prosecutions and new disclosure rules, Congress last year cut back on the appropriations items it added to the president’s budget requests. But if two versions of the defense authorization bill are any indication, targeted spending has bounced back.

Taxpayers for Common Sense recently analyzed the legislation, detailing earmarks worth $9.9 billion in this year’s defense authorization bills — an increase of 29 percent from last year.

Not surprisingly, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) racked up more earmarks in his bill than any other lawmaker — 49 items worth more than $198 million. While you wouldn’t necessarily expect money for the Defense Department to wind up with an automaker, Levin’s earmarks funnel some funding that way.

Two of his earmarks go directly to General Motors; several others help an Army research center in suburban Detroit seek energy-efficient technologies.

A Levin spokesman had no comment on the senator’s earmarks.

The House has passed its defense authorization bill, and the Senate is expected to resume consideration of its measure after the Fourth of July recess.

Senior members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — do well, the taxpayers group found.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) raked in $18,000 from Digital Fusion, a company for which Reyes supported a $4 million set-aside. Taxpayers for Common Sense said that “this earmark request is especially remarkable considering that Digital Fusion may have illegally reimbursed company executives for political contributions made to Reyes, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal.”

Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, provided $5.4 billion for a hyperspectral sensor, from a Missouri company called Clean Earth Technologies, that will help protect troops. Clean Earth has donated nearly $14,000 to Akin’s campaign since 2005, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The pattern of providing earmarks to companies that donate to lawmakers points to a quid pro quo, but it can’t be proved, said Steve Ellis, vice president of programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense. The problem with picking contractors with parochial connections, however, is that it can prevent the government from buying the best product.

But, Ellis said, that’s not quite as bad as steering business to companies that provide poor, or even harmful, products.

In one case, The Seattle Times found last year that an earmark to a company called InSport funded Marine T-shirts that melt to the skin at high temperatures.

The majority of earmarks aren’t inherently harmful, said Ellis. It’s the reliance on so many over time that points to a pattern of abuse.

In 1970, Congress approved about a dozen earmarks. The growth took off in the mid-1990s, under then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who pointed out in a memo the benefits earmarks could bring to reelection campaigns. By ensuring a 60-40 majority-minority, split on earmarks, both parties have an interest in continuing the flow.

Despite this year’s increase, Ellis believes that continued focus and attention on earmarks will eventually help stem the growth.

“As scrutiny of earmarks continues, and federal investigations continue into abuses that were exposed, there is going to be more downward pressure,” Ellis said. “I can certainly say I don’t have to explain what an earmark is anymore.”

But new rules that have increased earmark visibility may be helping to grease the wheels for even more.

One congressional staffer said the public list actually makes lobbying easier. The reason? Earmarks target specific companies but still need to go through a competitive process at the Pentagon. Now if funding misses its mark, lobbyists can return to the sponsoring lawmaker and point to the list to steer the dollars back on track.

Even though the number of earmarks, and the number of companies now soliciting them, has become enormous, there is an upside, the aide said. Staffers now have a greater ability to assess and choose the best ones.

“It’s gotten relatively easy to avoid the stinkers,” he said.

Other staffers express annoyance at the taxpayers group, because the growth in earmarks includes funding that the Defense Department needs but the administration didn’t seek. This year, that includes about $500 million for F-22 Raptors. The Pentagon needs the money in order to close the production line or continue making the fighter jets, but it did not budget any.

David Morrison, a lobbyist for the Podesta Group and self-described unabashed supporter of earmarks, worked for years as the clerk on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee for Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.). And at one point, he acknowledged, the glut of earmarks did become too much, wasting the time of staff and members.

“The fact is, they’ve been reduced over the last couple of years. I think there’s been a concerted effort to reduce the numbers and the amount,” Morrison said.

But at the end of the day, all the earmarks that win Murtha piggy nicknames in Washington help his district, Morrison argued. “What he has done is a textbook case of what members are elected to do to support the people they represent. And he has been very good at it,” Morrison explained.

Still, the argument that congressmen should help businesses back home with access to the federal gravy train doesn’t wash with Ellis.

“Nobody’s shown me yet in the articles of the Constitution that people have to take everything that’s not bolted down and send it back to their home districts,” he said.

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