Hoyer Is Proof of Earmarks' Endurance

"Sometimes it's a question of which is the chicken and which is the egg," Hoyer added.

Maillard isn't the only Hoyer contributor who stands to benefit from 2008 earmarks.

In the defense spending bill recently signed into law, the congressman won $2 million for a project begun in 2002 at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. "The entity to receive funding for this project is ManTech Systems Engineering Corp.," Hoyer wrote to the House Appropriations Committee.

That company is a subsidiary of ManTech International, whose executives and employees gave $12,100 to Hoyer's 2005-06 congressional campaign, making them one of his top contributors that cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan Web site for campaign finance information.

A Patuxent spokesman said the project was valuable. The system uses sensors to evaluate helicopters' performance, helping the Navy "improve flight safety, reduce maintenance costs and increase the helicopters' availability," said spokesman Rob Koon.

Not all earmarks are wasteful, but the problem, critics say, is that they allow individual legislators to direct money to projects that might not be national priorities and that benefit specific companies.

Hoyer denied any favoritism toward ManTech, saying many defense contractors donate to his coffers because he champions military bases in his district. He added that the base chose the contractors.

"To the extent Pax River is successful and Pax River is growing and Pax River has programs that I think are important to the national defense, ManTech is advantaged," Hoyer said. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) signed on as a co-sponsor for the earmark during negotiations on the bill.

Hoyer has won enormous goodwill in his district for bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects. His office said that he might have gotten even more earmarks in some past years but that it's impossible to tell because there was no accurate accounting before this year's reform.

If approved, his 2008 earmarks will benefit local hospitals, universities, environmental projects and nonprofit groups. They also would help preserve jobs at such federal facilities as the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. It would get earmarks for studies on turf grass, coffee and cocoa, and potato diseases, among other subjects.

A longtime proponent of what he calls "good pork," Hoyer said he supports spending that helps create jobs and improve education, health care, public safety and national security.

"All of that is good investment," he said.

Legislators often know the needs of their districts better than the executive branch, he said. And he defended the party's commitment to fiscal responsibility, pointing out that Democrats had instituted a system to offset new spending with budget cuts or increased taxes.

"The problem with the Republicans is they spent vast sums of money without paying" for the expenditures, he said.

Watchdog groups say they don't necessarily want to eliminate all earmarks but improve accountability. Ronald D. Utt, a budget specialist with the Heritage Foundation, said the transportation spending bill offers an indication of how unwieldy the practice has become. Until the mid-1980s, the bill had an average of three earmarks a year, he said. The 2008 bill has more than 2,000.

"The system has so grown in the last decade . . . that it's impossible to believe the Appropriations Committee is really looking at each project with a careful eye," said Alexander of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.