Assessing Member Office Implementation and Uptake of Member Directed Spending Programs, AKA “Earmarks” (Thus Far)
On February 26, 2021, House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro announced that the committee would reinstate a modified opportunity for congressionally-directed spending — what used to be known as “earmarks” — with a new “Community Funding Program” (CPF). On April 26, 2021, Senate Appropriations Chair Patrick Lahey announced that the Senate committee would likewise reinstate its Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) program, allowing Senators to request specific funding for local projects in their states.
While these programs were both reinstatements of prior programs, the institution of additional guardrails for transparency and accountability, as well as Member and staff turnover in the House and Senate, meant that for most offices, these programs were brand-new. While this created significant challenges for the offices tasked with implementing a new constituent-facing program under a swift deadline, some offices nonetheless stood out for creating user-friendly accessible processes for their constituents.
Over the past several months, we took a look at how Members messaged the program to their constituents, how they publicly indicated an intention to participate, and what lessons can be learned about the new program thus far.
CPF and CDS Basics
The new CPF program in the House incorporated many of the bipartisan recommendations made by the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, including reforms:
Limiting CPF spending to 1% of discretionary spending
Limiting requests to certain agency programs or ‘eligible accounts’
Allowing only nonprofits or government entities to submit requests
Limiting Member requests to 10 projects
Requiring Members of Congress to certify that neither they nor their family members have any financial interest in the project, and
Requiring public disclosure of requests on Member websites and the Committee’s website.
Additionally, the new program requires a statement explaining why the project is a good use of taxpayer funds and will prioritize those projects with demonstrated “community support.” These reforms were intended to level the playing field both among Members and those entities submitting requests.
The Senate’s CDS program incorporated many of the same requirements for transparency and accountability, with some notable differences:
Is information about CPF and CDS publicly available and easy to find?
One critique of the previous earmark regime was that it often rewarded the well-connected and well-funded. Many entities that pursued earmarks did so with the assistance of a professional lobbyist, making it difficult for smaller organizations or governments to even find themselves in the running. One way to combat this inequitable access is to make information about the CPF process clear and accessible and for Member offices to share the information broadly and publicly. When reviewing committee members’ websites, we looked for examples of plain language descriptions, clear forms, and resources created in addition to the guidance issued by Appropriations subcommittees.
On the whole, we found significant disparities in the information Members made publicly available to their constituents.* As of April 15th, two weeks before the first House appropriations deadlines, only 57.8% of House Appropriation Committee members had posted information about the CPF program on their websites. By party, this broke down to 84.8% of Democrats and 23.1% of Republicans.
*NB: in our brief and unscientific survey, we focused on information made available on Member office websites. Offices may also have shared information on social media, in local media, and in direct constituent outreach. We also note that even for some offices that did post information, it was not necessarily easy to find.
On the Senate side, as of May 28th, a little more than two weeks before the first Senate appropriations deadlines, only 23% of Senate Appropriations Committee members had posted information about the CDS program on their websites. Again, this broke down largely along party lines, with 40% of Democrats posting guidance and only a single Republican doing the same.
We also noted a significant range of the quality of information posted by Members who signaled their intent to participate in the program. While the Committees and subcommittees shared guidance with Members about the internal requirements of the new program, each individual office was left on their own to create and share resources about the program with the public and to design their own systems for accepting and evaluating requests within each office. This has led to a broad variation in information quality and availability from district to district and state to state, and a massive increase in the workload of the staffers who manage this program within each office.
What kind of administrative burden did the new program place on offices?
(credit: @heardoncapitolhill)
On the House side, information about the CPF program was distributed to offices in a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter in mid-March, with submission deadlines set initially in mid-April and later pushed back to late April. On the Senate side, the situation was similar: Senate Appropriations Chair Leahy released information about the new CDS program on April 26th, and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees released additional guidance to staff and (separately) to the media on May 9th, with the first Subcommittee deadlines in mid-June.
This gave congressional offices roughly six weeks to (1) understand the program, (2) design an intake process for their office, (3) share information about the program with constituents, (4) receive and review proposals, (5) select proposals to recommend, (6) submit proposals to the Appropriations committee. If not immediately apparent, that is a LOT of work to be completed in every participating office in a short period of time. For perspective, it took our team at the POPVOX Foundation approximately five days with two staff members to digest the House Appropriations committee guidance and create resources about the program, and an additional several days to rework these resources for Senate Appropriations guidance. This was unnecessarily complicated by guidance that was inconsistently formatted from one subcommittee to the next, with much of the information made available only in PDF image files that did not allow for a simple copy/paste.
We note that this guidance was given in much more detail on the Senate side, walking staff through the steps required to submit a request through the Senate’s software in detail, although this detailed guidance was not released publicly. However, guidance on specific requirements for eligible accounts was still inconsistently formatted and difficult to copy/paste. While some Senate offices seem to have had access to an internal access management system allowing constituents to create accounts to submit CDS requests, this was not universally used among offices posting guidance.
The granularity of the guidance provided for staff in the Senate may actually have contributed to the challenges in providing information for the public: on the House side, many offices that posted publicly available information were simply reposting public guidance from the Committee, and letting constituents take on some of the work of parsing it. With the Senate guidance on request preparation and submission never made public, this was not an option for Senate offices, who then had to either assemble their own materials from pieces of the Committee’s guidance or rewrite new materials entirely. This may partially explain why proportionately fewer Senate offices offered CDS guidance than House offices.
Standout examples and lessons for the future
(credit: @memes.house.gov_)
Despite the challenges described above, we found several standout examples of Members going above and beyond to make the process accessible to their constituents, share information widely and (it appears) to streamline operations within their offices:
Rep. Chris Pappas [D, NH] not only created a Community Advisory Board to help evaluate CPF requests, but also opened every submission to public comment through a local newspaper.
Rep. Mike Simpson's [R, ID] website is a model for providing easy-to-understand information for constituents to understand and engage in the process, including his explainer on the budget and how local projects are served by Congressional appropriations.
Rep. Lauren Underwood's [D, IL] ‘best for’ framing for eligible accounts makes it easy for constituents new to this process to understand their options.
Rep. Betty McCollum’s [D, MN] clear guidance for what types of projects her office would prioritize likely not only helped constituents, but cut down on work for her staff.
Rep. Kim Schrier’s [D, WA] clear and early messaging gave her constituents as much time and information as possible to complete requests.
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s [R, SC] website had the clearest explanation of the new program, listing of eligible accounts, and other materials that we saw on the Senate side.
Sen. Chris Coon’s [D, DE] page had a concise, cogent explanation of the program, and a very user-friendly application form.
Sen. Sherrod Brown’s [D, OH] prominent posting of materials, and thoughtfully written explanation of the program and FAQ significantly lessens the burden of application for small organizations.
These are all innovations that other offices can learn from in the next appropriations cycle, and we hope other offices will take note.
Why did some offices not participate?
(credit: @healthpolicystaffer)
Although deadlines for the Senate have not yet passed, in looking at the House Members who submitted requests, a fairly significant number chose not to participate: out of 441 eligible Members (including Delegates and Resident Commissioners), 327 submitted CPF requests (roughly 74%). Of these, only one Democrat chose not to participate, but 49% of the Republican caucus did not participate.
Obviously, some reasoning was ideological: a small but vocal contingent of Members continues to hold that earmarks are a path to wasteful spending, corruption, and other unsavory practices.
However, for Members more on the fence, in talking with current and former staff, we heard repeatedly that a significant source of hesitancy over participating in the program was the potential for negative media attention over specific requests. Although the reinstated programs on both House and Senate sides contained multiple guardrails intended to uphold transparency and create good uses of taxpayer funds, and the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress’s recommendation to reinstate earmarks was bipartisan, many prominent conservative figures spoke out early and forcefully against reinstating earmarks, and conservative media was quick to release lists of House requests it deemed ‘frivolous.’
Some of this hesitancy could be mitigated with extensive vetting of requesting organizations and community input in request selection. Many Members created Community Advisory Boards to provide input on requests, and our team worked to develop a vetting guide for staff drawn from best practices in philanthropy, nonprofit management, and the experience of staffers who handled appropriations before the 2011 earmark ban. However, this thorough vetting is nonetheless a very time-intensive process, layered on top of the work already involved in the new process outlined above, and may still not be enough to counter bad-faith attacks.
In discussions with staff, we heard that several offices felt they did not have enough time to establish a public outreach program within their office this year, choosing instead to work with relatively few ‘sure bet’ organizations and programs, but were planning to begin wider outreach and community training early for future opportunities, viewing the CPF/CDS programs as an opportunity for long-term education and engagement.
A Mid-Implementation Assessment
Our cursory review of information and processes provided by House and Senate Appropriations Committee Members reveals a complex process with multiple barriers to participation for both offices and constituents. The significant amount of work involved in setting up an internal process to manage and vet earmark requests posed a challenge for offices who chose to participate, and likely led to large amounts of both duplicative work and to challenges in creating proactive accessible public education programs that would truly level the playing field for earmark participation.
With that said, some Members who chose to participate still managed to go above and beyond to serve their constituents. This is a positive sign: as we noted above, we hope that some of these standout offices will be examples for their peers and for the Committees on providing standardized guidance that will prevent duplicative work and make it easier for offices to do outreach on the program.
On the House side, we are also encouraged by signs that the Appropriations Committee is listening and evolving to better meet the needs of Members, from extending subcommittee deadlines for submissions to the recent announcement that the Committee itself will host a disclosure portal for request information. While Members will still be required to post their requests on their own website, the unified table for request information will take some of the pressure off of individual member offices. As several Members of the Select Committee on Modernization have also expressed continuing interest in reforming the appropriations and budget processes, we also hope that the Select Committee will be monitoring implementation as a case study for further recommendations.
The CPF and CDS processes are both far from over: we will continue to monitor both as requests are disclosed, selected for inclusion in Subcommittee reports, selected for inclusion in Appropriations bills, selected in Conference, and finally implemented and reviewed.
Several open questions remain:
Will the Senate take the same measures as the House in releasing all requests in a consolidated table?
Considering the discrepancy between Republican and Democrat requests, will funding be allocated evenly between the parties?
How will different eligible accounts on the House and Senate sides be resolved in conference?
How will the GAO’s audit of a random selection of requests be conducted?
Thanks to Franz Wuerfmannsdobler from the Bipartisan Policy Center for his invaluable expertise! For more on BPC’s work on earmarks in the 117th Congress, see here.
