Hastert Directs Millions to Birthplace

Congressional earmarking skirts both processes by letting lawmakers write funding for hometown projects directly into legislation, mainly the annual appropriations bills that keep government agencies running from year to year. In recent years, to overcome budget impasses at the end of each congressional session, GOP leaders have consolidated many of the specialized spending bills into a single "omnibus" bill containing thousands of earmarks that guarantee broad support from legislators.

GOP officials defend earmarking, saying lawmakers are better attuned to their communities than bureaucrats. "They know the needs on the ground," said John D. Scofield, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee.

Scofield said the committee approves only a few thousand of the more than 30,000 annual earmark requests from lawmakers. Those account for a small fraction of federal spending.

But party leaders and top committee officials have a clear edge in this process, said Keith Ashdown of the nonpartisan budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"When you're flat-lining the amount of domestic spending that can go out under the formulas, that's when the big dogs can move themselves to the front of the line," Ashdown said.

McCain Targets Pork Barrel

Hastert's office is one of those that has taken full advantage of this opportunity, an analysis of recent spending legislation shows. He has used earmarks to get $3.2 million for a National Guard armory in Aurora and $7.5 million for a library at Judson College in Elgin.

The funds for Judson College, which describes itself as an evangelical Christian school, were tucked into a section of the Department of Energy's appropriation for "biological and energy research." A Hastert news release explained that the library would be a "green" structure that would "cut down on fossil fuel costs and make the most of alternative natural resources."

Hastert has also made extensive use of earmarks in the "health care and other facilities" account, which in the last decade has seen runaway growth.

The account appears as a special construction fund in the budget of the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The unit runs a variety of health programs for women and children, low-income families, HIV/AIDS patients and other vulnerable groups, but until the 1990s it had little involvement with construction projects. Today it administers the transfer of funds to projects designated annually by Congress.

Although the initial impetus for the construction account came from a senior Democrat, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.), who sought hospital construction funds for his state, use of the account escalated rapidly after Republicans took control of Congress in 1995.

In November, Republican and Democratic legislators inserted $484.6 million for 963 projects into the account, as part of a consolidated spending bill that ran more than 1,000 pages. The largest earmark was $20 million to build a biomedical science research center at West Virginia University, a Byrd request.

The account has brought a steady stream of taxpayer dollars back to Aurora, a rapidly growing community of 150,000. Beginning in 2000, it has contained 10 earmarks for Aurora nonprofits, including about $540,000 in last fall's spending bill for the Visiting Nurses Association of Aurora.