March 6, 2011 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Communities in Schools of San Antonio, a nonprofit that works to prevent students from dropping out, received what it thought was an important lifeline from Rep. Charles Gonzalez in the 2011 federal budget.
Mr. Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents San Antonio, had requested $350,000 to help the group expand—a bid that was approved by a House panel last summer.
But that money is now on the chopping block, along with hundreds of other requests to steer money to specific nonprofits, including household names like Reading Is Fundamental, Special Olympics, and Teach for America.
Communities in Schools wanted the money to serve more schools in one of the state’s poorest school districts and to overcome an expected loss of state money tied to Texas’s massive budget shortfall, says Nancy Reed, the group’s chief executive.
But Ms. Reed’s group will not get its $350,000 check from Washington because that request is considered an earmark—a pet project of a member of Congress who is trying to bring money into his or her district.
And in today’s Washington, where lawmakers face political pressure to prove they are serious about cutting the budget deficit, earmark is a dirty word.
2-Year Ban
The Republican-controlled House—fueled by an influx of members who were elected last November on promises to slash federal spending—has banned earmarks for two years.
President Obama has said he will veto any bill that includes them. And the Democratic-led Senate, while not thrilled about depriving senators of the chance to bring money into their states, has had no choice but to go along.
Furthermore, the House has defined earmark broadly so that it includes any money that is awarded to a specific group without competition.
The anti-earmark fervor is drawing praise from government-watchdog groups like Citizens Against Government Waste, which issues a Congressional Pig Book each year on April 15, the income-tax filing deadline. The report lists all Congressional earmarks, or “pork-barrel spending,” including those obtained by charities.
Last spring, the organization’s news release criticized money that was obtained by New York’s Carnegie Hall ($300,000), Portsmouth, N.H.’s Music Hall ($1-million), and the Washington National Opera ($200,000).
But some nonprofit advocates say the campaign against earmarks has gone too far, snaring many worthy programs that are far from the “Bridge to Nowhere”—a proposed bridge-construction project in Alaska that became a national symbol of wasteful federal spending.
“There will be repercussions across the nation” when people realize that earmarks help pay for respected projects operated by nonprofit groups and universities in their communities, says David Gogol, a nonprofit consultant in Washington.
Anger Over Cuts
Under its definition of earmark, the House has proposed cutting off money that in the past was directed to a variety of charities that operate on a national stage rather than just in a district.
That angers Stephen Corbin, senior vice president for community impact at Special Olympics, which has received federal money since 2008 for a project to create better school environments for children with intellectual disabilities.
The group got $8.1-million in 2010, but the House wants to pull that spending. Rep. Hal Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee—which allocates federal money—said lawmakers had scoured the budget to find examples of wasteful, unnecessary, and excessive spending. But Mr. Corbin contests the notion that his program is wasteful or unnecessary.
“I want to know who’s really looking at results in a rigorous way,” he says, adding that his group has worked hard to document the benefits of its program, which has reached 600,000 students in 15,000 schools since it started.
But with lawmakers facing pressure to slash the budget, charity leaders are not getting much support from either party as they fight for money that had been available in past years.
Endangered Services
The House eliminated all requested earmarks as part of an effort to squeeze $61-billion from 2010 budget levels when it adopted legislation last month to cover spending until the fiscal year ends on September 30—a measure that is needed because Congress never adopted a 2011 budget. The Senate wants less dramatic cuts, however, raising fears that an impasse could lead to a government shutdown. Both chambers agreed last week to adopt a two-week spending bill that makes $4-billion in immediate cuts while they continue to hash out their differences.
A small sampling of the requests that will be affected by the earmark ban:
• Oregon’s two Democratic senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, asked for $600,000 to help the YWCA of Greater Portland provide services for victims of human trafficking.
• Rep. Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, requested $450,000 to help the East Harlem Council for Human Services pay for facilities and equipment.
• Iowa’s senators, Republican Charles E. Grassley and Democrat Tom Harkin, requested $400,000 to help Family, a charity in Council Bluffs, offer services to young children in their homes.
• Rep. Stephen Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, asked for $350,000 to help the Gavin Foundation, in Boston, operate a transitional residence center that provides substance-abuse treatment to young people.
• Rep. Don Young, Republican of Alaska, sought $200,000 to help Covenant House Alaska provide services to homeless and runaway young people.
In addition, the House voted to end some federal spending that directs money to specific nonprofits.
For example, it said the Education Department should stop earmarking money for New Leaders for New Schools, a principal-training program, which received $5-million in 2010; Reading Is Fundamental, the children’s literacy group, which received $25-million; Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, which received $13.3-million; and Teach for America, the teacher corps for young people, which received $18-million.
Competing for Grants
President Obama differs with the House on the earmark for Special Olympics—he proposed setting aside money for the group in both his 2011 and 2012 budgets.
However, the other organizations will not find any support from the White House. The president wants the education nonprofits, for example, to vie for competitive grants awarded through the Education Department.
“The administration believes competing funds rather than earmarking them to specific entities will lead to higher-quality programs and improved student outcomes,” an official at the education agency explains.
Teach for America, he says, would be able to seek money from a new program called Teacher and Leader Pathways, which would make $180-million available for teacher preparation in the 2012 fiscal year, up from $107-million spent on that mission in 2010.
Reading Is Fundamental would be able to work with school districts and states that compete for grants from a new $383-million literacy program.
But the nonprofit groups say such changes would be inefficient because they would disrupt well-regarded, established programs.
“We’d have to start from ground zero, in a way,” says Margaret McNamara Pastor, a member of Reading Is Fundamental’s board.
Her mother—Margaret McNamara, a former schoolteacher and wife of Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary and World Bank president—started the organization in 1966. “They’re asking for a really different kind of organization.”
Reading Is Fundamental, which oversees 17,000 book-distribution sites and works with 400,000 volunteers across the country, has received federal money since 1976, and it now makes up 75 to 80 percent of its revenue.
Trouble Raising Money
Kevin Huffman, executive vice president of public affairs for Teach for America, is dismayed that the money his group gets to recruit and train teachers is considered an earmark. He says the organization worked for several years to get Congress to authorize the money in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, meaning it was vetted by multiple Congressional committees.
“It’s no longer one of those things where a Congressman sticks in money at the last second for a bridge,” he says.
While the 2010 allocation of $18-million represented just 10 percent of Teach for America’s budget, the federal money is needed to help the group expand at a time when it is receiving a record number of applications from young people, especially in “less well-funded regions” that have trouble raising private money, he says.
Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, an anti-earmark group, agrees that because Teach for America is a national program with a large number of Congressional sponsors, its earmark is not as worrisome as those going to pet projects pushed by just one lawmaker.
Still, he says, taxpayers get a better deal if groups are forced to compete for federal money. The government should have “some kind of criteria and evaluation to fund them,” he says, “rather than simply, This is the money they get every year.”
