The Great American Military Rebrand
Earmarks, those handy appropriations tools congressfolk used to slip million-dollar favors into the budget, had been ballooning in number for over a decade and looked so bad upon reveal, corruption and ethics became the top issue in the 2006 midterms. The Cunningham affair was the worst, featuring a congressman who wrote a menu of bribe services (he should have consulted Stringer Bell for legal advice there) and handed out tens of millions in dubious deals to a defense contractor named Mitchell Wade. The San Diego Tribune reporter who broke that story explained:
In return, the contractor showered the congressman with gifts helping him finance a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, a condo overlooking the nation s capital, exclusive use of a yacht on the Potomac, antiques, private-jet travel and prostitutes.
Fast forward to last week. As January 6th hearings, a presidential fist-bump, and a Kardashian spawn s gender reveal gobbled attention, the House quietly passed a monster $839 billion defense package. It was the definition of a bipartisan bill, chirped Alabama s Mike Rogers, as 180 Democrats and 149 Republicans joined to smash by tens of billions previous records for military spending. With this already underreported story, just one news outlet, Roll Call, described a first of its kind report published by the Department of Defense Comptroller s office, which revealed at least $58 billion of congressional additions above Joe Biden s budget request.
As former Senate aide and defense budget analyst Winslow Wheeler puts it, these additions are not (all) earmarks under either the House s or Senate s shriveled definition of them, but they are all earmarks& under the classic understanding. What s in those requests? As Roll Call s Donnelly explains, the $58 billion included money to respond to disasters and the war in Ukraine, but also:
Billions of dollars in weapons the military did not seek, such as more than $4 billion worth of unrequested warships, many of them built by the constituents of senior appropriators.
Matt Taibbi.