Academic Pork Barrel Tops $2-Billion for the First Time
Congress directs millions to college projects on security and terrorism
By JEFFREY BRAINARD and ANNE MARIE BORREGO
Washington
Although it faced soaring demands on federal spending and a burgeoning budget
deficit, Congress still directed more than $2-billion this
ALSO SEE:
SEARCHABLE DATABASE:
Congressional earmarks to
higher education
year to pork-barrel projects at colleges and
universities. That record level marked the first time
that academic earmarks had surpassed $2-billion.
In Directing Dollars, Congress
Favors Homeland-Security
Projects
Lawmakers provided a total of at least $2.012-billion
Profiles in Pork: 2 DomesticSecurity Projects
in the 2003 fiscal year, according to data collected by
A Town May Become a
Terrorism Classroom
TABLE: Top Recipients of
Earmarks
for projects involving specific colleges and universities
The Chronicle. That represents an increase of 10
percent over the previous year's total of $1.837-billion.
The record spending continues a steady, seven-year
TABLE: How the States Rank in
Academic Pork
trend of large annual increases by Congress for the
CHARTS: Escalating Academic
Earmarks
earmarks. The 2003 total was more than six times as
PIE CHARTS: Earmarks by
Agency
directed, noncompetitive appropriations, also called
high as the $296-million that Congress provided in
1996.
The 2003 fiscal year, which ends next week, also
brought continued growth in the number of academic institutions receiving
earmarks.
Some 716 colleges made the list this year, up from 668 in 2002. The number of
earmarks, meanwhile, increased by nearly 20 percent, to 1,964.
Much of the growth was driven by increased spending on homeland security and
anti-terrorism, both of which have become priorities for some university
researchers since the September 11, 2001, attacks. Congress provided $223million for those projects in 2003, up from $126-million in 2002 and $73-million in
2001.
The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, for instance, got $1-million to study
ways to protect water supplies from terrorism. Legislators gave Texas A&M
University at College Station $20-million to train emergency personnel to respond
to terrorist attacks.
A Plethora of Projects
As in past years, Congress also provided money for a plethora of favored
projects unrelated to security.
The University of Missouri at Columbia, for example, got $1.7-million for research
on cultivating shiitake mushrooms. And the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and
the University of Hawaii-Manoa each got $250,000 to catalog historical records in
preparation for their states' celebration, in 2009, of the 50th anniversary of
statehood.
The single largest earmark in 2003, for $21-million, went to the New Mexico
Institute of Mining and Technology for an optical astronomy observatory that will
have some military applications. New Mexico Tech also received the most money
over all, some $56-million.
The directed appropriations are controversial because colleges rely on
lawmakers with political influence and seniority to secure them. In addition,
Congress does not require the earmarked projects to go through the open, peer-
reviewed competitions that federal agencies typically use to award money for
scientific research and other projects in higher education. In those competitions,
agency employees who are experts in particular fields oversee the awarding of
grants and contracts to colleges, based on merit. In many cases, the agency also
receives advice from panels of academics.
Critics complain that members of Congress and their aides choose recipients of
the directed grants based on their own judgments, often after lobbying by the
colleges seeking the money. As a result, some observers worry that earmarked
funds go to scientific-research projects that are not of the highest quality and do
not serve national priorities.
"One of our great strengths is our refusal to politicize science," says Mitchell E.
Daniels Jr., who resigned as director of the White House Office of Management
and Budget in June to run for governor of Indiana in next year's election. "We
start down that ski slope at our peril."
During his time at the White House, Mr. Daniels tried unsuccessfully to persuade
Congress to reduce pork-barrel spending for scientific research, and he butted
heads with lawmakers over the issue.
Little Improvement in Quality
Members of Congress and college officials, who for the most part support
earmarking, counter that the practice is a necessary alternative to help worthy
projects that agencies have wrongly rejected or misjudged. Even so, the limited
evidence available about the results of academic earmarking suggests that the
directed grants do not help institutions improve the quality of their scientific
research, on average.
University officials faced with a sluggish economy also argue that they need
earmarks to supplement tight spending for higher education by the states. Yet
the spurt in academic earmarks actually started in the late 1990s, when many
states were flush with cash.
Some observers had expected the torrid pace of growth in academic earmarks to
cool this year, as the federal deficit rose.
In August 2002, as lawmakers were working on the budget, the Congressional
Budget Office projected the deficit for 2003 at $145-billion. Last month the office
revised the estimate sharply upward, to $401-billion, and offered a worse outlook
for 2004. That increase stemmed from the emergency costs of military operations
in Iraq and from declining federal revenues (which in turn resulted partly from tax
cuts secured by the Bush administration). The budget office also predicted that
federal deficits would continue through the decade.
Nevertheless, federal spending for nondefense projects is projected to rise by
more than 8 percent in 2003, and defense spending by 17 percent. The 10percent increase in spending for academic earmarks falls in between.
Large Grants to Large Colleges
Almost 60 percent of the academic-earmark funds went for research projects in
the natural or social sciences, and 13 percent for research buildings or
equipment, The Chronicle's survey found.
To be sure, not all earmarked funds go for research. Some pay for building
parking garages or campus roads. Congress has a long history of giving
communities pork-barrel funds for such projects.
However, some critics of earmarking worry that total pork-barrel spending for
academic research projects has become too large when compared with all
federal spending for academic research. In 2003, the $1.445-billion in research
earmarks equaled 8 percent of the $19.191-billion spent by the federal
government for academic research over all in the 2001 fiscal year, the most
recent year for which statistics are available.
Some of the research-related earmarks were very large: 46 were for $5-million or
more. That sum is far larger than the average grant awarded by the National
Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation through peer-reviewed
competitions.
Lack of Government Funds
Universities seek research earmarks partly because the federal government fails
to provide large grants that reflect the realities of modern research, college
officials say. Some of those studies require expensive equipment and
laboratories, as well as large teams of scientists.
For the most part, federal agencies do not pay directly for the construction of
research buildings, saying it is not a federal responsibility.
One of the few exceptions is a peer-reviewed, competitive grants program run by
the National Institutes of Health, which Congress gave $120-million in 2003.
By comparison, Congress earmarked $232-million for research buildings and
equipment in 2003. For example, Brown University got $2.25-million to construct
a life-sciences building.
College officials also defend earmarks as helping enhance the research
capabilities of institutions that have traditionally not received much federal money
for research. But many of the universities with the most earmarked funds in 2003
had already obtained a lot of federal money through more traditional, peerreviewed routes.
It's Whom You Know
Of the 30 top recipients of academic pork in 2003, 17 were also among the 100
academic institutions receiving the most federal research funds over all in the
2001 fiscal year, the most recent for which figures are available. And of those
100 institutions, 89 received a combined total of $573-million in earmarked funds
for research in 2003, or 40 percent of all academic-research pork.
Another common denominator among the academic institutions that get the most
earmarked funds is that they are frequently located in states represented by an
influential member of Congress, especially one who sits on the powerful
Appropriations Committees in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Even better, it appears, is to have a member who is chairman of one of the 26
appropriations subcommittees. (There are 13 in each chamber, each overseeing
a separate appropriations bill.) That pattern continued even in 2003, when the
appropriations process was interrupted by a change in party control in the
Senate.
Democrats still held a slim majority in October 2002, when Congress passed two
spending bills for the Defense Department. In the November election,
Republicans won a 51-to-48 majority in the Senate, while the House remained in
Republican control. Congress went on to complete work, in February, on the
remaining spending bills, more than four months after the 2003 fiscal year began.
When the shift in Senate control is taken into account, universities in states that
had a chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, or of the full appropriations
panel, got more earmarked dollars in 2003.
Seven of the 10 states that got the most earmarked cash for academic projects in
the two Pentagon bills had such representation. Only 2 of the 10 states that got
the least had such representation, according to The Chronicle's analysis.
That disparity among states with and without such clout remained almost the
same for nondefense spending when the all-Republican lineup of subcommittee
chairmen finished work on the remaining appropriations bills for 2003, in
February.
"You can't expect members of Congress not to grab at opportunities to, as they
see it, deliver for their constituents," says Mr. Daniels, the former White House
budget chief.
Still, the growing federal deficit and increasing costs in Iraq may well put a lid on
earmarks in future years, observers say.
"I think that, going forward, it will be hard to see [these] kinds of increases," says
H. Stewart Van Scoyoc, president of Van Scoyoc Associates, a lobbying firm
here that advises colleges on securing earmarks and other federal funds. "I think
it will be leveling off" even as more colleges seek earmarks, he adds.
Indeed, the federal government's overall fiscal health may be the main constraint
on future spending on earmarks, says James D. Savage, a professor of politics
at the University of Virginia who is a critic of academic pork.
But so far, he notes, Congress has not reined in spending.
Meanwhile, college administrators are under strong and growing pressure to
maximize the number of federal dollars they receive, says Mr. Savage, who is
also assistant vice president for research and federal relations at the University
of Virginia. Many college officials view earmarks as ways to help promote
technology-oriented economic development in their regions.
Earmarking, once controversial in some academic circles, "is now ingrained," he
says. "Clearly there are no constraints on higher education internally not to
earmark."
Even though President Bush has advocated holding the line on federal spending,
he lacks a line-item veto that would allow him to delete earmarks from
appropriations bills.
What's more, Mr. Daniels acknowledges that while he was the White House
budget chief, he did not make use of another weapon: directing federal agencies
to ignore the Congressional earmarks. Almost all of the directed appropriations
appear in sections of spending bills that are not legally binding on the agencies.
They simply describe the lawmakers' intent for how the appropriations should be
spent.
But if the Bush administration tried to wield that tool, it surely would draw howls
of protest from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Of his own oratorical campaign against earmarks, Mr. Daniels says, "If we were
ever very persuasive with members of Congress on this subject, I couldn't detect
it."
HOW THE STATES RANK IN ACADEMIC PORK
TOP RECIPIENTS OF PORK
Total non-shared
earmarks in
millions
'03
rank
'98-'03
rank
2003
'98-'03
1
2 Florida
$130.6
$380.3
2
4 Texas
$118.8
$323.5
3
1 California
$95.4
$413.6
4
5 Pennsylvania
$93.3
$287.3
5
6 Mississippi
$87.9
$281.8
6
3 Alabama
$87.6
$335.8
7
8 New York
$85.7
$234.6
8
10 New Mexico
$82.9
$183.9
7 West Virginia
$67.3
$269.1
9 New Hampshire
$62.3
$192.5
9
10
11
12 Illinois
$57.7
$164.8
12
16 Ohio
$56.0
$131.6
13
13 Louisiana
$45.8
$159.4
14
20 Hawaii
$39.4
$120.7
15
11 South Carolina
$36.9
$174.9
16
19 Iowa
$36.1
$121.5
17
31 Michigan
$36.1
$64.7
18
23 Virginia
$35.8
$92.5
19
18 Massachusetts
$35.4
$123.2
20
26 Nevada
$34.5
$75.6
21
30 Georgia
$33.6
$65.7
22
17 Montana
$32.8
$125.9
23
14 Missouri
$32.5
$158.1
24
28 North Dakota
$31.8
$74.1
25
15 Kentucky
$31.5
$135.6
26
24 Washington
$28.2
$79.2
27
21 New Jersey
$26.2
$111.0
28
27 North Carolina
$25.2
$74.6
29
33 Maryland
$25.1
$61.9
30
25 Indiana
$22.4
$75.8
31
40 Utah
$20.2
$45.1
32
38 Idaho
$18.3
$49.2
33
41 Oklahoma
$16.8
$44.9
34
45 Maine
$16.5
$39.6
35
29 Wisconsin
$16.5
$71.5
36
35 Nebraska
$16.3
$56.3
37
22 Alaska
$16.1
$104.2
38
42 Rhode Island
$14.1
$44.1
39
32 Kansas
$13.5
$63.6
40
36 Arizona
$13.3
$56.0
41
48 Tennessee
$13.2
$31.2
42
43 Arkansas
$13.0
$42.2
43
37 Oregon
$11.1
$54.0
44
46 Colorado
$11.0
$37.9
45
47 South Dakota
$9.9
$32.5
46
34 Minnesota
$9.5
$57.8
47
44 Connecticut
$6.8
$39.9
48
49 Delaware
$6.2
$19.1
49
39 District of Columbia
$5.9
$46.6
50
50 Vermont
$2.9
$18.9
51
51 Wyoming
2.0
2.0
Other
1
2
American Samoa
$0.6
$0.6
2
3
Guam
$0.5
$0.5
3
4
U.S. Virgin Islands
$0.2
$0.2
4
5
Federated States of
Micronesia
$0.1
$0.1
5
6
Northern Marianas
$0.1
$0.1
6
1
Puerto Rico
0.0
1.9
Note: Each year Congress directs federal agencies to support certain projects at
specific universities. The Chronicle ranked states by the total dollar value of
earmarks that went to colleges in those states and that Congress did not require
to be shared with any partners in other states. Many colleges received earmarks
that they were required to share with other colleges, businesses, or government
laboratories. Agencies did not always report what portion of these earmarks
was designated for each partner, and so those amounts are not included. This
ranking includes the value of shared earmarks where all the partners were
academic institutions located in one state. Sums are rounded, but states are
ranked in order of actual amounts received.
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
http://chronicle.com
Section: Government & Politics
Volume 50, Issue 5, Page A18