Report blasts Lamborn over earmarks

Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn led Colorado's seven-member House delegation in the dollar amount of earmarks he introduced in the current fiscal year, a watchdog group reported Tuesday.

With the release of its 19th annual "Pig Book," Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based group opposed to pork-barrel spending, also made public a database listing earmarks by each federal legislator.

It showed Lamborn's earmarks for the fiscal year that began in October totalling $21.73 million, easily surpassing the $13.37 million total of Democratic Rep. John Salazar.

On the other end of the Colorado list were Reps. Mark Udall  and Marilyn Musgrave, who each had zero. Udall is now in the Senate and Musgrave was voted out of office.

Earmarks are funding requests attached to other legislation by a single member of Congress and are treated by other members as privileged.

As defined by Citizens Against Government Waste, an earmark is not included in - or greatly exceeds - the president's budget request, greatly exceeds the previous year's funding, is not the subject of congressional hearings, or serves only a local or special interest.

Lamborn, whose district includes Colorado Springs, said Tuesday that the watchdog's group definition was too broad, and that it should not have included the seven military-related funding requests it attributed to him.

"I don't ask for earmarks," he said. "Earmarks are done in the middle of the night."

Lamborn said his funding requests "go through the entire process in the light of day. These requests start out in the authorizing committee.

 They are subject to amendment and debate in committee. Then they go to the floor of the House and they're once again subject to amendment and debate."

He also said that because all his funding requests were defense-related, "they addressed a national issue," and therefore did not serve a local interest even if they were for projects in and around Colorado Springs.

On his Web site, Lamborn's list of 2009 funding requests is longer than the watchdog group's, and adds up to $63.35 million.

According to the watchdog group, the number of earmarked projects declined by 12.5 percent in fiscal 2009, but their cost to taxpayers rose by 14 percent from 2008, from $17.2 billion to $19.6 billion.

When nearly $1.5 trillion is being spent by the federal government to prop up the financial markets and stimulate the economy, congressional earmarks may seem like small change. And every legislator who introduces an earmark can point out its local benefits.

But spending on pet projects risks leaving an odor, especially in a deep recession.

When he challenged Lamborn in the Republican primary last year, Jeff Crank hammered the incumbent over his earmarks, which according to the 2008 "Pig Book" totalled $17.15 million.

"We just had this campaign that was supposedly about change," Crank said Tuesday, "and now there's more earmarks than ever before, and I think the American people have had enough."

But Crank declined to criticize his rival, accepting the notion that the military projects embraced by Lamborn do not qualify as earmarks.

According to CAGW's list, Colorado's champion earmarker is former Sen. Ken Salazar, now Interior secretary, who added $80.2 million in pork-marks in 2008. Former Sen. Wayne Allard, now retired, was a close second at $77.6 million.

Lamborn was near the middle of the watchdog group's list of House earmarkers, tied for 238th of the 435 congressmen. The top spot went to Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, with $256.8 million, and on the Senate side to Thad Cochran, R-Miss., with $653.1 million.

Overall, Colorado's delegation is relatively abstemious when it comes to earmarks, the watchdog group found. The researchers ranked Colorado 46th of the 50 states, with $17.27 earmark dollars per capita.
 
The champion? Alaska, a tiny state with a legendary earmarker, former Sen. Ted Stevens. He helped give the state a "porkapita" of $322.34.

Contact the writer at 476-1654.